ã€ŠThat Which Pullsã€‹


 CHAPTER 1

    Tunk. Tunk. Tunk.

    I tapped my head against my center display, and sighed. I enjoyed being contracted as RMC, I did, but I wanted to be my own person. 5 years I had spent working as a docking tug operator, and I almost had enough saved up to buy out my contract, get a full ship refit and go explore instead. I perked up when the radio crackled.

    TAU SEVEN, TUG BASE.

    I keyed my radio for voice activation.

    ¡°Tug Base, go ahead for Tau Seven.¡±

    TAU SEVEN, BE ADVISED. EMERGENCY REQUEST INBOUND, SYSTEM CLASS MINING BARGE WITH A SECONDARY REACTOR FAILURE. SPS DESIGNATION FIVE NINER JULIET TAC MIKE KILO NOVEMBER TAC ROMEO MIKE CHARLIE TWO. ETA FIVE MINUTES. DELIVER TO STATION BAY ECHO NOVEMBER TAC NINER TWO.

    ¡°Tau Seven copies. 59J-MKN-RMC2, 5 minutes, Bay EN-92. Gently so nothing goes nuclear.¡±

    AFFIRM TAU SEVEN. SENDING YOUR TRANSPONDER DATA TO ROMEO MIKE CHARLIE TWO NOW. THEY¡¯LL BE IN CONTACT. SLOW IS SAFE.

    I rolled my eyes. Company policy demanded that we use specific phrases over comms, even if they made no sense.

    "Safe is fast. Tau Seven, standing by for contact."

    A glance at my center right hand console display showed the SPS designator I had already forgotten, and the bay I would be towing to. I turned off voice activation for comms as I activated an automatic pre-tow checklist. I had a minute or two to check my equipment before I had to start burning.

    As I clambered out of the cabin, comms buzzed again.

    TAU SEVEN, RMC2.

    "FUCK!"

    I reached around my seat (which some idiot had decided needed to be on rails in the middle of the cockpit, like some kind of atmospheric fighter. Downright inconvenient) and reactivated my radio.

    "RMC2, go ahead for Tau Seven."

    HOWDY TAU SEVEN. NAV IS SHOWING THAT WE GET THERE IN ABOUT 5 MINUTES. DO WE NEED TO DELAY FOR YA?

    "Negative RMC2, maintain your current course. All I need to do is extend my docking arm and make sure the clamps are showing good. I''ll update you with info for a different tug if I have a problem."

    COPY THAT TAU SEVEN. RMC2 INBOUND.

    Toggling my comms with yet another spine bending stretch (Fuck the engineer that designed that cockpit, and fuck company regulations that kept me from making unapproved modifications. That seat should not be centered.) I looked at the screen for docking controls. It showed a wireframe image of my pride and joy, the Dusty Star. Being a base model Rumors Mining Corporation licensed product from Makisan Corp, she had docking ports on all three axes, just leaving the aft clear for extra forward engine power. Each side had boosters, of course, but the singular retrofit I was allowed was for Dusty (as I affectionately called her) to have interfaces on her docking arms that gave me control of an attached ship''s boosters and engines. Not a good option to exercise next to a station, but when I intercept a ship a tenth of an AU from the station it was a nice option to have. Just a hair too much power at the wrong time, and the station would have an unapproved airlock. Always a bad day.

    I planned on keeping that change. I would still need to make money once my contract was over, and having five functional docking arms that could move both cargo (or loot, you never knew) and other craft offered nearly peerless flexibility. As for my other upgrades, shoving a tertiary reactor into the powerplant would¡­ keep me distracted from my job. I shook my head and refocused.

    The wireframe has a list of systems, both critical and QoL, showing in various colors. Docking was still showing yellow, but I knew that wasn¡¯t an issue. A few weeks ago, I had attached to a freighter that had been given bad nav instructions (I suspected some flavor of corporate espionage, but that wasn¡¯t even in my pay scale, much less my pay grade) and had taken a shortcut through a transient asteroid field. The ship had been fine aside from some dents, but they didn¡¯t want to risk a boost malfunction punching them through the station. Completely understandable.

    The problem was that they didn¡¯t have good on-board diagnostic systems unlike Dusty, so they had no way of knowing that the docking arm they asked me to use had taken a good enough hit to shred the mating surface. They also had no way of knowing that the damage to their docking arm would also ruin my docking arm. The damage happened while I was on the job, so the company had to pay for a replacement, but I was waiting for it to show up. In the meantime, my right side clamp would just have to be out of commision. C¡¯est la vie.

    Everything else that mattered showed green or cyan, so I was ready to go.

    ¡°RMC2, Tau Seven.¡±

    GO AHEAD TAU SEVEN.

    ¡°RMC2, my systems are showing good to go for a tow. Is there a specific docking port you would prefer I latch to? I also need to know if there are any complications on your ship that will affect how I handle flying once we¡¯re docked. More details on your reactor failure would fall under that.¡±

    NEGATIVE TAU SEVEN. EITHER THE UPPER OR THE LOWER DOCKING ARM ARE GOOD. WE EVEN RIGGED SOME CAMERAS, SO WE CAN CONFIRM THERE IS NO DAMAGE ON OUR CLAMPS. HEARD THERE WAS AN ISSUE A MONTH AGO. OUR SECONDARY REACTOR IS IN THE MIDDLE OF A PROLONGED MELTDOWN, BUT WE ALREADY RETRACTED THE CORES AS FAR AS POSSIBLE. AS LONG AS YOU FLY GENTLE AND TRY NOT TO STRESS OUR POWERPLANT TOO MUCH, WE SHOULDN¡¯T BE TURNING INTO A BALL OF FIRE ANY TIME SOON. WE DO HAVE A GOOD BIT OF MASS FROM MINING, BUT NOTHING ELSE NOTABLE.

    ¡°Copy that RMC2. I¡¯ll choose my docking location based off of orientation. Send me good coords and I¡¯ll see you there.¡±

    COPY TAU SEVEN. ETA TWO MINUTES, TRANSMITTING LANDING COORDINATES THROUGH ASPSISC NOW. SEE YOU SOON.

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    Launching myself over my seat to settle in the cabin (who the fuck designed that, honestly), I reran the same pre-tow checklist as a final precaution. Powerplant, check. Engine cycle, check. Boosters, check. Hydraulic systems A, B, C, and D, check. Life Support, failure. I knew about that one; the organics filter had gone over its hours while I was out on this shift, just needed to replace it and clear the fault. Communications, check. Exterior lighting, check. Navigation, check. Weapons, N/A. Chaff and flare, check. Everything that was important for an intercept and tow was either green, or only barely an issue. It was just a filter.

    Having gotten myself settled in my seat and satisfied that I wouldn¡¯t need to get up for anything again, I secured some restraints to my suit and looked at my nav displays. Still nothing from RMC2 for meeting them, and everything else was already preloaded, so there was nothing to do but wait.

    DING

    ¡°There you are.¡±

    It took 17 seconds and 54 milliseconds to calculate my jump, according to the computer. It even took so long that my maintenance system threw an error and said the navigation computer could have had a virus or a component failure. I ignored it for now; the failure code would still be there later, and the jump was already calculated and executing.

    I grimaced, not looking forward to the jump. The twist it always put in my stomach was just unpleasant. Some people likened in to riding in a true gravity roller coaster, but I hated those; I didn¡¯t even like true gravity, really. I¡¯ll stick with my generated grav fields in space, thank you very much.

    SECURE. SECURE. SECURE. JUMP IN TEN SECONDS.

    Another retrofit I looked forward to was getting rid of the jump delay. It was just me in the ship and that wasn¡¯t changing any time soon. I didn¡¯t need to get yelled at.

    SECURE. SECURE. SECURE. JUMPING.

    A twist.

    The stars in front of me shifted ever so slightly as I moved at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light. Or, the world moved around me? I had never really understood how tungstanium managed to make jumps work, but I didn¡¯t have to. It just did.

    TAU SEVEN, RMC2. WE HAVE VISUAL CONTACT, FORTY FIVE FORTY FIVE.

    ¡°RMC2, Tau Seven copies. Boost to local stop so I can maneuver around you. Inbound.¡±

    UNDERSTOOD TAU SEVEN. DECREASING EXTERNAL LIGHT FOR SHORT VISUAL RANGE. SEE YOU SOON.

    I leaned forward in my seat so that I could catch a glimpse of RMC2 before they dimmed their lights. I didn¡¯t want to blind myself, but I¡¯d rather deal with a few spots in my retinas for a little bit than accidentally turning both of our ships into so much radioactive space dust. I caught a glimpse before they dimmed their spotlights. Between what I saw and my scanners (nothing expensive of course, RMC wouldn¡¯t shell out for anything good) I was confident that docking would be simple.

    I leaned back in my seat and grabbed my controls. As much as I hated the design of my cabin, the flight controls were admittedly good. With physical throttles for the engines and main RCS boosters and digital controls for the auxiliary RCS boosters and the CMGs (which were generally locked because they needed to be precisely controlled) and a physical 6 DOF joystick for both ¡®aeronautic¡¯ control and translation control, I was confident in my ability to fit myself and the Star into any gap that had the space. Parking myself within 50 meters of a ship and properly matching velocities? Nothing at all.

    A few deft turns of my right wrist and some judicious boosting later, and I was aligned with RMC2, my bottom clamp less than a millimeter from being perfectly aligned with their top port. It was a little disappointing, frankly; I was usually better than that. Reaching over to my right side console, I set the autopilot to maintain the same distance and speed from RMC2 that it had now, and climbed over my chair. Ever since Marke quit, I was a one man crew. It wasn¡¯t usually a huge deal, since the only constant maintenance I had to do was the flightly servicing for fuel, oil, LOX, and water, but the docking clamps weren¡¯t connected to the cockpit. Another change I wanted to make once I could; I didn¡¯t want to worry about paying someone once I was freelancing, and everything really should be tied into the cockpit anyway.

    I flicked a switch, and the clamp system came to life. A monitor flickered on, showing a live feed from all 6 clamps, statuses for each, and a rangefinder. A dial under the monitor showed NORM on its own screen, so I turned it through the different clamps until it said BLW. The clamp monitor changed accordingly, transitioning from all 6 clamps to the single clamp selected and it¡¯s mate (currently backlit in red) on the other ship. The rangefinder showed 50 meters like it should, and with a distinct lack of frantic beeping in the cabin I was relatively assured my autopilot hadn¡¯t shit the bed.

    As soon as the clamp monitor showed the mating clamp in green, I flicked the DOCK switch to COUPLE and held another switch in EXTEND, and listened to the motors whine as my monitor showed both clamps extending to meet between Dusty and RMC2. A second whine rattled through my ship once they had less than 5 meters between them, telling me that the electromagnets had turned on. Those magnets, strong enough to disrupt even station class scanners, were what allowed docking clamps to self correct bad piloting and create a safe seal, so long as the alignment didn¡¯t place the clamp faces completely apart.

    A thunk, and my monitor showed the docking clamps as connected and the downlink as solid. I heard a voice in the cabin, but I wasn''t close enough to answer immediately.

    ¡°Tau Seven, RMC2 over downlink. How copy?¡±

    I reached around my seat to switch comms to the PA system. No need to transmit over system-wide frequencies when were had a physical connection.

    ¡°RMC2, Tau Seven. Lima Charlie. Let me get situated and we''ll head to the station.¡±

    ¡°Sounds good. Our engine controls are transferred, just waiting on confirmation.¡±

    I didn''t bother replying, seeing as I was a little busy clambering over Mt. Seat. Once I was seated and strapped in, I started poking at my consoles.

    ¡°Engine control verified RMC2. Can I get a verbal confirmation of jump stability?¡±

    ¡°RMC2 is good for a jump Tau Seven. All cargo and personnel are secure, and our hull is sealed.¡±

    I sighed. I hated having to read out the massive block of text on my center console, but I had gotten in trouble before for ignoring it.

    ¡°Copy that. I''ll be initiating a jump to within 500km of the station. Until I direct you, please do not activate, deactivate, actuate, disable, or otherwise disturb, modify, or interact with your powerplant, engines, RCS, communications, or any other navigation or control systems. I will be using the thrusters, boosters, and other control systems of both craft to bring you into dock safely at docking bay... Echo November Tac Niner Two. Neither myself nor Rumors Mining Corporation take liability in any form for damage caused to either your craft or the station due to piloting failures caused directly or indirectly by you or your equipment. Should this jump and the following docking procedure cause undue cost to myself due to you or your equipment in any way, the difference in cost will be owed by you to Rumors Mining Corporation within ten standard days or upon your return from your next venture, whichever occurs first. Is this acceptable, and do you have any questions?¡±

    ¡°They make you read that every time Tau Seven?¡±

    ¡°Yes they do. Clear to jump?¡±

    ¡°Affirm Tau Seven, take us home. This reactor is melting a hole in my pocket.¡±

    ¡°Copy RMC2. You''ll have a 10 second warning prior to the jump; it shouldn''t take long for coords and clearance, so I suggest you stay strapped in. Tau Seven out.¡±

    I reached forward and flipped back to system comms.

    ¡°Tug Base, Tau Seven. Positive dock with RMC2. Requesting jump location and clearance to dock at bay EN-92.¡±

    TAU SEVEN, TUG BASE. SENDING COORDINATES NOW. YOU ARE PRE-APPROVED FOR BAY ECHO NOVEMBER TAC NINER TWO. YOU ARE CLEARED TO JUMP AS SOON AS YOU RECIEVE YOUR LOCATION. AVOID TRAFFIC PATTERNS AND LAND AS SOON AS ABLE.

    ¡°Copy Tug Base. Jump and dock ASAP, ignore local chatter. Consider inbound. Tau Seven out.¡±

    I put my comms back to the PA setting.

    ¡°Update RMC2. Getting coords now, we''re already cleared to dock. Sounds like it¡¯ll be quick.¡±

    ¡°Fantastic Tau Seven. We''ll be here.¡±

    It took just shy of three minutes for my ASPSISC to show new coordinates, but as soon as I had them I initiated the jump.

    SECURE. SECURE. SECURE. JUMP IN TEN SECONDS.

    Only 5ish seconds this time. Must have been some kind of weird glitch that worked itself out earlier. Neat.

    SECURE. SECURE. SECURE. JUMPING.

    A twist.

    A shift in the stars visible through my cabin windows, and I focused on ignoring my suddenly churning gut.

    ¡°All good down there RMC2?¡±

    ¡°People and equipment are good Tau Seven. Reactor didn''t destabilize either.¡±

    I nodded.

    ¡°Good to hear. Burning to station. Tau Seven out.¡±

    We had jumped sunside of the station, and it was close and large enough to be visible. I dialed Bay EN-92 into my autopilot, and told the computer to avoid all designated traffic lanes just like I had been told. I wanted to avoid any angry calls about doing that, so I set my lights to do a clockwise strobe, with green, red, and white light alternating. The downlink let me set the same on RMC2, just counterclockwise. Rumors had designated that as the emergency nuclear signal, so we shouldn''t be bothered.

    I watched the station as we approached. It looked like a bunch of cubes that had been haphazardly stacked together, which it essentially was. I was still too far away to make out any docking linkages, but I knew that up close, the station looked to have a band of hair where the linkages were all attached and waiting to latch onto a ship.

    Thankfully the traffic in and out of the station was all on the opposite side of the superstructure, so the autopilot could just fly in a straight intercept course until the ship was just a kilometer away. At one kilometer, just like always, my autopilot shut down and I had to take over. My autopilot, thankfully, was smart enough to generate guide lines for me follow. Some low speed, careful maneuvering later, and RMC2 was docked to the station and I was climbing out of my cabin to unlock my own clamp. I was looking forward to my shift being finished so I could take my time off. I needed that new filter, but even though it took priority I could have.

    ¡°Thanks again, Tau Seven. For a minute we all thought we would be nuked by our own ship.¡±

    ¡°No worries RMC2. Fly safe.¡±

    I released my clamp, turning off the magnet as watched to make sure the clamp fully retracted, then turned the station off. Another climb into the cockpit, and I turned my PA off as I switched to system comms.

    ¡°Tug Base, Tau Seven. Requesting docking bay for servicing.¡±

    CLEARED FOR DOCKING TAU SEVEN. BAY TANGO ROMEO TAC ONE THREE.

    ¡°Copy Tug Base, TR-13. See you at undock.¡±

    ROGER TAU SEVEN. TUG BASE OUT.

 CHAPTER 2

    I stood in the bottom of my ship as the bottom docking clamp, just above my head, let out a hiss as the station''s interlock made a vacuum-proof seal. Thanks to how Dusty Star''s gravity was set, I was inverted to the ship with my feet firmly planted on what really should have been the ceiling. A hiss echoed above me as the docking clamp unfurled and chilled humid air washed over me. Luckily, the ladder was lined up properly so that when I moved from Dusty''s gravity well to the station''s I would just be kneeling on the ladder and could walk the rest of the way. Station maintenance misaligned docking ports sometimes; turning a ladder into monkey bars after 72 hours in a ship was a poor surprise.

    The lights in the interlock linkage swapped from red to white, so I climbed up the ladder. As I passed through thy boots. Marke might have decided to leave, but at least he left behind some good ideas; having to hook my feet around every rung I climbed was an annoyance I was glad to do without.

    I pulled my way along the ladder, rung after rung. The station workers like me always got sent to dock at the unimproved docking linkages, so nothing mechanized was installed within the linkage; no rotating walkways, no movements aides - just a fucking ladder. TR-13 wasn''t where I usually attached to the station, so I didn''t know where along the ladder it would be that station gravity would kick in. At rung 647 (helpfully labeled, but I counted them anyways to pass the time) the helmet of my pressure suit went from weightless to pulling my head down suddenly enough that I bonked my forehead against the ladder that was suddenly beneath me instead of in front of me.

    Three rungs later, and I was walking toward the station along the worst walk way ever made, used filter banging against my knees with every step I took. It hung off a tether from my belt to keep it from floating somewhere inconvenient, since I had changed it for a new spare I had forgotten about. Doing my best to ignore the filter, it just took walking to rung 1429 to reach the airlock on the station side of the linkage. As I waited for the airlock to cycle, I looked back at the almost 1500 meters I had crossed. There was a fucking cloud floating through the linkage. Whoever was on atmosphere control needed to get their shit together and bring down the humidity.

    I stepped into the air lock and popped my helmet as soon as the pressurization light swapped to green. Stepping out onto the rickety catwalk, I paused to take in the view. I was greeted by the massive interior of the stations repair shop, an open hangar meant to provide a pressurized environment meant for the maintenance and assembly of system class ships. The berths were almost empty of spacecraft at the moment, but there was still plenty of noise coming from mechs and techs working on fixing their equipment. The lone ship being worked on had taken a pretty substantial blow; almost half of the ship was missing, and the pieces suspended next to it that had been stripped off so far were nothing more than twisted scrap. I had been the one to pull the wreck in after it collided with an asteroid; listening to what few crew that were left break down over comms when they described the rest of their crew slowly dying from blood loss and sepsis were tough to listen to to say the least.

    Normally I would pause to enjoy the sounds of ship repair echoing through the massive bay; the sound of welding, drills, hammering, booster carts, and distant swearing were what I had grown up with. Knowing what ship was being torn apart for usuable parts and scrap had me moving faster than normal.

    ¡°ATTENTION STATION PERSONNEL, ATTENTION STATION PERSONNEL. BE ADVISED, THIS STATION WILL BE REPOSITIONING IN 300 STANDARD HOURS. BEGIN PRE-MOVEMENT CHECKLISTS. THIS STATION WILL BE REPOSITIONING IN 300 STANDARD HOURS. BEGIN PRE-MOVEMENT CHECKLISTS. STANDBY TO ASSIST MINING BERTH CONVERSIONS. BEGIN LINKAGE STORAGE. ALL QUALIFIED PERSONNEL, REPORT AVAILABILITY TO THE DOCKMASTER FOR COLLISION REPAIR SCHEDULING.¡±

    I stopped walking and took a deep breath, then scrubbed at my face with my free hand. A mining crew I had docked a week ago had mentioned that the scanners weren¡¯t picking up much more ore at the quality RMC demanded, but there hadn¡¯t been any warning about a system move before now that I knew about. I shook my head and got moving again. It wasn¡¯t my problem yet.

    ¡°Tugger!¡± As I pushed open the door to Tug Base, the controller shouted my name and waved me over as he disappeared into a side office.

    ¡°Huh.¡± 72 was the space traffic controller that has been assigned to the station. I wasn¡¯t sure how it was done, but RMC had given him an implant or something that removed his need to sleep to let him always be on duty. If I had known better, I¡¯d have said the lack of sleep is what made him an ass, but I knew him before he¡¯d become truly full-time, and he was an ass then too.

    I eyed the office that STC, the official name for what I called Tug Base, worked out of. It used to be neat and well organized, but with the sheer amount of traffic lately, myself and my fellow tug operators hadn¡¯t had a chance to properly file any of our paperwork. 72 had decided that on top of the digital system that RMC put in place hundreds of years ago, tug operators like myself needed to do physical flight logs by hand at the end of each shift. Even with our ship computers automatically writing them and submitting them through docking datalinks, 72 still insisted.

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    I made my way to the side door 72 had disappeared through, trying to turn a blind eye to the state of the office. The stacks of paper, most shoulder high on me with the rest even higher, took up most of the floor space that wasn¡¯t occupied by computers or the filter recycling that I quickly tossed my used filter into. I opened the door to 72¡¯s office half way, not wanting to knock over a stack of digital data storage in the way, but I didn¡¯t even have time to close the door after slipping in before 72 started monologuing.

    ¡°Your next shift was supposed to be in 18 hours, but as soon as you had that nuclear meltdown handled, I was sent a folder to give to you. No, I don¡¯t know what it has inside. No, I don¡¯t know who delivered it. No, you don¡¯t have the option to refuse. The only thing they told me was refusal would extend your contract indefinitely. This will also excuse you from conversion work. Get out.¡±

    I turned on my heel and walked out of Tug Base, too in shock to be righteously indignant about the state of the office. This was bad. A mandatory contract extension could be the death of a company if the right people heard about it. The fact that, one, I had been tapped for whatever this was either meant I was too important to let go or all to expendable. I knew my employer; whatever this folder contained was probably going to get me killed.

    Getting out of conversion work was nice, but helping the station stack ships for mass transit really wasn''t that bad of a job, just tedious. Standing on the walkway just outside the Tug Base office, I opened the folder, ignored the massive block of warning text on the first page threatening every possible bad thing if I were not allowed to read the contents of the folder, and read the next page.

    <center>

    TOP SECRET

    MEMORANDUM FOR AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL

    ATTN: OPERATION BLACKLIGHT

    BLACK HOLE HAS LOCATED SUSPECT ¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€. BLACKLIGHT TEAM ¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€ HAS BEEN TASKED WITH REMOVAL OF ¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€ AND THE REACQUISITION OF ¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€ IN THE POSSESION OF ¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€.

    BLACKLIGHT TEAM ¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€ HAS ¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€ AUTHORIZATION, CODE ¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€.

    BLACKLIGHT TEAM ¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€ WILL UTILIZE SPYGLASS CONTRACTOR ¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€, CODE NAME THERIDION, FOR ¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€, AND ¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€. TEAM  WILL UTILIZE THERIDION''S ¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€ IN FULL PER ¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€¨€ TO ASSURE COOPERATION.

    TOP SECRET

    </center>

    What was the point in labeling things as ''Top Secret'' if you were going to redact half of the page anyways? It didn''t make sense. It seemed to me that it was a safe bet to assume I was Theridion. None of the rest of the memo made sense to me. Who were Black Hole and Spyglass? What is Spyglass supposed to ''utilize'' to assure my cooperation? I had read the page over five times before I decided to flip to the next page.

    There were 26 more pieces of paper in the folder, but only the first two had anything legible on them; the rest contained what looked like some kind of report, but with so much blackout that I would need to sit down and study them to get any kind of meaning. I snapped the folder closed, tucked it under my arm, and started walking again. This folder was a mystery, sure, but my direct supervisor had told me I was excused from not just my job the next day, but from the massive amount of work I would need to juggle soon, with all the traffic headed to the station that would need towing. I had plenty of time to deal with this redaction-filled mystery later, but what couldn''t wait any longer was my stomach.

    I passed through 3 bulkhead airlocks before I saw another person. Or, really, he saw me first.

    ¡°Tugger! Man, am I glad I caught you. I saw you got removed from the rotation for the move! Did you break something? Did you break someone? I hope you aren''t in trouble. Getting in trouble sucks. Enjoy your time off. They told me I would get a week bumped off of my contract for every day I had to cover for you, so you must have really done something bad. What do you think it was? I heard about that reactor meltdown you towed in. Were they all okay? I hope they were. Free radicals aren''t radical at all. Hah, get it? Radical? Its some old slang I read about the other day. Its supposed to mean popu-¡±. A bulkhead closed and cut him off mid-prattle.

    Jemes meant well, he did. He just didn''t shut up. Getting stuck in an airlock with him was almost as bad as having to listen to 72, but at least Jemes wasn¡¯t actively an asshole. I would deal with Jemes prattling for hours before I had to get a lecture from 72; fuck him, that extraneous paperwork was such a waste of resources. My stomach reminded me that I didn¡¯t need to deal with my coworkers nearly as badly as I needed to feed myself. I wound my way through the stations hallways, too distracted by my thought about the folder I was still holding to acknowledge the people I walked past.

    It only made sense that I was Theridion, right? I mean, if I was the suspect there would be no reason to give me warning. Then again, I had no idea who was involved. I didn¡¯t know of any groups called Black Hole, and I had never heard of an Operation Blacklight. I was fairly confident Rumors didn¡¯t have a black ops department, but my contract had kept me busy with all things spacecraft; if it didn¡¯t relate to something with a flight deck and a pressure seal, I didn¡¯t know about it.

    My ruminating wasn¡¯t anywhere close to finished by the time I got to my assigned living space. Rumors had seen fit to give me a full service suite when I was running tug ops while 72 was getting his implant(s?) and they had let me keep it when I started flying. What was even better was that I didn¡¯t have a roommate after Marke had left, so it was the one place I was nearly guaranteed privacy.

    I held my palm on the pad on the face of the door. A second passed, and then the door pushed in slightly, then split as it whooshed into the wall pockets. I grinned; I would never get tired of that door. I left the lights off in the main room as I walked into the kitchen, dropping the folder that threatened to entirely upend my future plans on the counter. I¡¯d deal with it after I had eaten.

    I tapped the light control above my kitchen counter, illuminating the floodlights mounted in the upper cabinets. The shine off the steel made me blink, being that I had already adapted to the darkness of my quarters. I had opened my cooler and was debating frying some mushrooms or just throwing a sandwich together when I heard a cough in the living room.

    ¡°Really? A cough? You fucking idiot.¡±

    ¡°Well, fuck. I¡¯m not allowed to ominously cough now? This is bullshit. Can we just bag him now?¡±

    This wasn¡¯t good. I didn¡¯t recognize that voice, but the door I had used was the only way in and out. Whoever else was in here with me must have been waiting for me.

 CHAPTER 3

    I started to scan my kitchen frantically as I felt my heart ramp up. I grabbed the chef¡¯s knife out of my knife block, knowing full well that if it got taken there was nothing I could do. I was a tug pilot for fuck¡¯s sake, not a fighter.

    ¡°No, you fucking idiot. We can¡¯t ¡®jUsT bAg HiM¡¯. He¡¯s already read through the folder, and we¡¯re here to finish his onboarding. Behave.¡±

    ¡°Aye, sir.¡±

    I didn¡¯t like the sound of that one bit. Whatever this bullshit was, I wanted no part in it. I decided to let them know.

    ¡°I don¡¯t know what this is, but I want no part in it. Get out of my quarters, I have a knife and security is already on their way.¡± I called out. There was a pause before the second voice, presumably the boss, called back.

    ¡°Contractor Sierra Charlie Romeo Lima Niner Two Six Gulf X-Ray Seven Three, nickname Tugger. You received a folder earlier. In fact, I know you received the folder because I gave it to your supervisor, and now that same folder is sitting in front of me. You¡¯re going to put the knife away, then come into this room and meet myself and my team.¡±

    ¡°That sounds great and all, it really does. I have a counteroffer for you; you get the fuck out of my quarters, take your folder with you, and I get back to my life.¡±

    ¡°No can do Tugger. Your contract allows this, and frankly, we wouldn¡¯t care even if it didn¡¯t. Either you sit down with us here, or I take my colleagues suggestion and we have this conversation somewhere less comfortable. I do like your couch.¡±

    ¡°And how do you plan to deal with security? Like I said, they¡¯re on their way.¡±

    ¡°Tugger. Tug. Can I- Can I call you Tug? Nevermind, I don¡¯t care. Tug. This whole section of the station is dead. You couldn¡¯t have called for security even if you had thought to. Which you didn¡¯t. You didn¡¯t even try. It¡¯s almost disappointing, really.¡±

    Well, fuck. My bluff had been called, and it sounded like there were two people in my living room that I had just waltzed past. At least two. Firming my grip on my knife, I reached around the corner and smacked the light controls for the living room. As casually as I could manage with my heart beating out of my chest, I walked out of the kitchen and leaned against the doorway.

    I was greeted with three people; two on my couch, one leaning against the wall next to the door. The two on the couch could have been siblings; one male and one female, both with ice blue eyes, the same jawline and nose, and white hair. Not grayed hair, but actually white. They were both wearing full body armor suits that I was unfamiliar with. Given my plans to be an explorer, I had done my research on the armored pressure suits I could acquire, but the quality on these was like nothing I had seen. The suits were covered in solid black plating with an iridescence that shimmered ever so faintly when they shifted. Under the plating lay what I assumed to be a muscle suit of some kind, given the dark gray cords of bundled material that rested over the matte black material that the lowest visible layer was made of. The third person wore armor of their own of the same description, but with a helmet as well. The helmet was made of the same material as the armor, and featured four disks of a faceted reflective blue-black material. Two of them were overly large and were clearly the ¡®eyes¡¯ of the helmet. The other two were significantly smaller and placed below and inward of the upper ¡®eyes¡¯. Below those were two bulbous protrusions that curled inward to the neck and had a hose from each running back into the helmet. It reminded me of the giant ogre-faced spiders that had run rampant fifty years ago. Scary fuckers.

    ¡°Well, well, well. He reappears.¡± The man on the couch spoke, clearly the leader who had been talking to me. ¡°I hoped you would be sans knife, but I¡¯ll take present and armed.¡±

    ¡°I have a shift in a few hours. Talk so I can eat and go to sleep. Better yet, get out so I can eat and sleep. I don¡¯t care what you¡¯re selling, but I¡¯m not interested.¡± Their presence pissed me off. I had been contracted for twenty five years, and only the first ten of that was with the growers. It was just like RMC to decide to throw me a bone to get me to extend. After all, I had taken the first one. ¡®Oh, come on Tugger, it¡¯s just five years. We¡¯ll let you take the ship and explore afterwards. We¡¯ll even hire you are a regular if you want. It¡¯s a good deal Tug, might want to take it before you can¡¯t anymore¡¯. The story was the same every fucking time.

    ¡°Right to the point then. You read the folder.¡± He said it as a statement, so I didn¡¯t bother confirming. ¡°I have a gift for you from my employer¡­ well, our employer. It will give you all of the information you need, and it might even give you some of the info that you want. The cost is another five years under an amended contract. In addition to having the Dusty Star transferred to your sole ownership, RMC is also willing to pay for all modifications you want to make or add, as well as allow you flexibility with her current setup, providing it can meet my mission criteria. You will be provided pressurized armor, as well as future upgrades when available or required in perpetuity. Until explicitly told otherwise, you will not share any information related to what you have already learned or what you will learn, on pain of death. Moreover, that information will not be discussed unless that discussion is held within a secure, controlled environment.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, my answer''s still no. Get out.¡±

    The man leaned back, making himself at home on my couch, and smiled indulgently. ¡°You clearly don''t understand. I''m not here to sell you something; you''ve been purchased.¡± He glanced at the third person standing by my door. ¡°Recluse.¡±

    They moved, tossing something at me that was clearly metallic, given how it glinted as it flew. I was already off-balance from the whole encounter, so I didn¡¯t have the presence of mind to not catch it. Snagging whatever it was out of mid-air, the second I made contact it extended obscenely long legs and wrapped them around my hand. I recognized the profile of an ogre-faced spider and froze; I hadn¡¯t had to deal with the giant version as it ravaged the local arm, but I had seen pictures. Whoever these people were was the furthest thing from my mind. The only thing in my mind was to not piss off the spider.

    The spider-robot-thing slipped through my fingers and wrapped itself around my hand and wrist, hissing softly as it worked its fangs and mandibles. ¡°Enough, stop scaring him.¡± The man on the couch spoke, and the spider scuttled up my sleeve, moving too fast for me to stop. Scurrying up my arm to my shoulder, I felt the spider position itself between my shoulder blades. Even if it had been slower, I was still frozen in fear. The single true horror story mankind had found in space, and it¡¯s little cousin was attached to my back.

    A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

    A sting resounded from just below my neck, finally spurring me to action. ¡°Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.¡± I muttered the word, over and over, as I dropped the knife and scrabbled at my back in a futile attempt to dislodge the thing. It had clearly already bit me, so at worst it would just bite me again. A tingle spread from the inital sting that I assumed was a bite up to my head, a wave of panic-inducing static traveling inexorably upwards. I slammed my back against the door frame I was leaning on, hoping to crush the spider since I couldn¡¯t reach it, but I collapsed as the tingling reached the base of my skull.

    I had been paralyzed. Sure, I could still feel my splayed limbs, and the knife I dropped had buried its tip in my thigh, but none of my anything would move, no matter how hard I pushed. ¡°Not to worry Tugger.¡± The bastard on the couch had crouched next to me and taken the knife out of my leg. ¡°We all went through it. I won¡¯t lie and say it was a pleasant experience, but the benefits are worth the onboarding. We¡¯re going to leave you to it. Theridion will take good care of both of you.¡± All I could do was glare as they left, and the static tingling spread over my face. My eyes tingled, and the world went black.

    A blinking blue bar winked to life in the void in front of me. A few seconds of blinking later, text started to scroll.

    OPERATION BLACKLIGHT - OPERATOR THERIDION ONLINE

    OPERATOR THERIDION

    -DESIGNATION 1: SCRL926GX73

    -DESIGNATION 2: TUGGER

    -AGE: 25

    -SEX: MALE

    -STRENGTH: AVERAGE

    -ENDURANCE: AVERAGE

    -INTELLIGENCE: AVERAGE

    -VISUAL ACUITY: EXCEPTIONAL

    -CURRENT CONTRACT

    ¡ª-TWENTY YEAR SERVICE, SPACECRAFT/STATION REPAIR & MODIFICATION

    ¡ª-TEN YEAR EXTENSION, STATION TUG OPERATIONS

    ¡ª-SPACECRAFT OWNERSHIP GUARANTEED, TEN YEAR EXTENSION BONUS

    --NO MAJOR INCIDENTS, APPROXIMATELY 0.348 MINOR INCIDENTS PER YEAR

    -SUB-CONTRACT (!)

    --OPERATION BLACKLIGHT MEMBER

    --INDEFINITE, J1724TZTN ENABLER

    --LINE OF ACCOUNTING - BHBLJ1724EG05

    -¡ª-PENDING CONTRACTEE ACCEPTANCE

    ---PENDING  ACCEPTANCE

    STRENGTH ACCEPTABLE

    ENDURANCE ACCEPTABLE

    INTELLIGENCE ACCEPTABLE

    VISUAL ACUITY ACCEPTABLE

    SERVICE RECORD ACCEPTABLE

    CONTRACTEE SCRL926GX73. YOU ARE BEING OFFERED AN INDEFINITE CONTRACT TO PARTICIPATE IN OPERATION BLACKLIGHT. BLACK HOLE HAS AUTHORIZED YOU ACCESS TO ADDITIONAL CLARIFICATION OF ALL INVOLVED PARTIES PENDING ACCEPTANCE OF THIS CONTRACT. YOU WILL ALSO BE AUTHORIZED BUDGETARY CONSIDERATIONS. AS A BLACKLIGHT ENABLER, YOU WILL ENSURE YOUR ABILITY TO RESPOND TO BLACKLIGHT REQUIREMENTS AS OUTLINED IN PRE-MISSION BRIEFS.

    BE ADVISED. BLACK HOLE HAS DEEMED THE AMOUNT OF INFORMATION OFFERED TO YOU TO BE DETRIMENTAL TO BLACK HOLE INTERESTS. YOU ARE FREE TO DECLINE THIS CONTRACT. IN THE CASE OF YOUR DECLINATION, YOU POSE A SIGNIFICANT SECURITY RISK TO BLACK HOLE INTERESTS. RUMORS MINING CORPORATION AND BLACK HOLE WILL ENSURE THE SAFE DESTRUCTION OF ALL INFORMATION DELIVERED TO YOU, INCLUDING YOUR DEATH.

    UPON ACCEPTANCE OF THIS CONTRACT, YOU WILL BE AUGMENTED TO BLACKLIGHT ENABLER BASELINES. YOU MAY ASK FOR CLARIFIERS ON ANY OF THE ABOVE INFORMATION PRIOR TO CONTRACT ACCEPTANCE. NOT ALL QUESTIONS WILL BE ANSWERED TO PROTECT BLACK HOLE INTERESTS.

    HOW DO I ASK A QUESTION?

    JUST LIKE THAT.

    WHAT ARE YOU?

    I AM THERIDION. I AM ONE OF A NUMBER OF AUGMENTING BIO-ACCESSORIES USED TO ENSURE OPERATION BLACKLIGHT CONTINUES TO BE A SUCCESS.

    I didn¡¯t respond immediately. I was clearly in over my head, but it seemed like my only halfway decent option was to accept the contract. It was either that, or get hunted down by who or whatever Black Hole was. Hopefully I could find out after I took care of whatever this was.

    WILL I BE ABLE TO ASK MORE QUESTIONS AFTER AND IF I ACCEPT THE CONTRACT?

    YES. YOUR AUGMENTATION IS FACILITATED BY ME. YOU WILL HAVE ACCESS TO A LIMITED BODY OF KNOWLEDGE, WHICH CAN BE EXPANDED BY A NUMBER OF ENTITIES. TEAM LEADER DEINOPIDAE, TEAM J1724TZTN WILL BE THE MOST RELEVANT PERSON IN THAT GROUP FOR THE FORESEEABLE FUTURE.

    WHAT ELSE DO I NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THIS CONTRACT AND THE DUTIES OF AN ENABLER BEFORE I DECIDE TO ACCEPT OR DECLINE THIS CONTRACT?

    ENABLERS WORK ON AN ON CALL BASIS TO PROVIDE TRANSPORT, MATERIAL SUPPORT, AND FILL OTHER MISCELLANEOUS REQUIREMENTS FOR THEIR ASSIGNED TEAM. TEAM J1724TZTN TEND TOWARDS RECOVERY AND REMOVAL MISSIONS, WHICH IS WHY YOUR EXPERIENCE SITTING IN ORBIT FOR LONG PERIODS AND PERFORMING PRECISION MANEUVERS HIGHLIGHTED YOU AS AN ENABLER CANDIDATE. THE NATURE OF THEIR MISSIONS ALSO MEANS YOU WILL ALMOST ALWAYS HAVE AT LEAST A WEEK OF WARNING BEFORE YOU ARE EVEN GIVEN YOU MISSION BRIEF. HAVING GRADE 5 ACCESS TO OPERATION BLACKLIGHT BUDGETING MEANS AN APPROXIMATE TEN-FOLD INCREASE TO YOUR INCOME, AS WELL AS ADDITIONAL FUNDS FOR EXPENSES REQUIRED FOR ENABLER DUTIES. THOSE ADDITIONAL FUNDS WILL COVER NEARLY ANYTHING, UP TO AND INCLUDING THE UPGRADES YOU WANT FOR YOUR DUSTY STAR. YOUR AUGMENTATION WILL INCREASE YOUR STRENGTH AND ENDURANCE OVER TIME BY SELECTIVE DNA EDITS THAT WILL ENSURE YOU ARE, SIMPLY PUT, BETTER THAN NORMAL PEOPLE. YOUR INTELLIGENCE, BOTH IN SPEED AND CAPACITY, WILL BE DIRECTLY SUPPLEMENTED BY MY HARDWARE. YOUR VISION WILL BE SUPPLEMENTED, WITH AN INCREASE TO YOUR VISIBLE RANGE. YOUR ABILITY TO HANDLE PHYSICAL STRAIN,ESPECIALLY HIGH G FORCES WILL BE SUPERHUMAN. AUGMENTATION WILL ALSO PROVIDE YOU A SIMILAR SUIT OF ARMOR TO WHAT YOU SAY TEAM J1724TZTN WEARING, IF MORE ADAPTED TO EXO-ATMOSPHERIC OPERATIONS.

    I didn¡¯t have a reason to say no, really. The contract being indefinite was certainly a downside, but given that it wasn¡¯t a constant job and I would have forewarning, I should still be able to explore. And then the pay. The pay! Making ten times as many credits as I was now was huge. That didn¡¯t even take into account that I would be able to upgrade Dusty Star on someone else¡¯s dime.

    HOW DO I ACCEPT THE CONTRACT?

    THANK YOU FOR ACCEPTING THE CONTRACT. IN ORDER TO AVOID FUTURE COMPLICATIONS, YOU WILL NOT BE CONSCIOUS DURING YOUR AUGMENTATION. YOU WILL BE ABLE TO ASK FURTHER QUESTIONS AND PREPARE FOR YOUR FIRST MISSION AFTER THE PROCESS IS COMPLETE. ALLOW ME TO BE THE FIRST TO WELCOME TO TO OPERATION BLACKLIGHT.

    The text remained floating in the void before me for a second, then faded until nothing was left but OPERATION BLACKLIGHT. Then the text faded and the blackness retracted, and I felt myself fall out of whatever I had been in and into oblivion.

 CHAPTER 4

    I opened my eyes. What a weird dream, I thought, as I got up from the floor.

    Why was I getting up from the floor? More importantly, why did I have armored gloves on? It had to have been a dream, right?

    GOOD MORNING, TUGGER.

    Fuck. ¡°What happened?¡±

    WE INTEGRATED DUE TO YOUR ACCEPTANCE OF YOUR NEW SUBCONTRACT. AS SUCH, I AM PROVIDING YOU PROTECTION FROM EXTERNAL FACTORS WITH A DEPLOYABLE ARMOR. YOU CAN LESSEN YOUR DEFAULT PROTECTION LEVEL AND CHANGE OTHER ARMOR SETTINGS AS YOU CHOOSE NOW THAT YOU ARE AWAKE. YOU WILL ALSO NOTICE SOME IMMEDIATE CHANGES TO YOUR VISION. YOU ARE ABLE TO PERCEIVE AND PROCESS INFRARED AND ULTRAVIOLET LIGHT NOW, BUT YOUR INFRARED PERCEPTION WILL SUFFER WITHOUT YOUR HELMET ON. YOUR PUPILS ARE SIMPLE TOO SMALL TO ALL FOR SUFFICIENT EM INPUT.

    ¡°How long was I out?¡± I wasn¡¯t meaning to ask the spider that had turned itself into armor around me, but as I levered myself into a sitting position with the wall to my back, more blue text began scrolling in my vision, just translucent enough to let me see through.

    UNCERTAIN. I AM NOT LINKED TO ANY LARGER NETWORK ON THIS STATION, SO I CANNOT GIVE YOU INFORMATION THAT YOU OR I DID NOT ALREADY POSSESS.

    My stomach rumbled, reminding me that my dinner had been interrupted however long ago. I started to stand, but rocketed to my feet as the armor I had been encased in moved around me. ¡°What the fuck was that?!¡±

    OUR INTEGRATION ALLOWS ME TO INTERCEPT SIGNALS MOVING TO AND FROM YOUR BRAIN. I CAN MANIPULATE YOUR ARMOR FASTER THAN YOU CAN YOUR MUSCLES, SO MY DEFAULT IS TO PROVIDE POWERED MOVEMENT ASSISTANCE WHILE ABLE. THAT CAN BE CHANGED WITH THE REST OF YOUR ARMOR SETTINGS.

    That was¡­ unsettling. If my nervous system was that entwined with whatever I had implanted, the logical conclusion was the stuff of horror stories.

    NOT TO WORRY. I AM UNABLE TO STOP YOUR NERVOUS IMPULSES, AND INTERCEPTING THEM DOES NOT SLOW NERVOUS CONDUCTION IN ANY MEASURABLE WAY.

    ¡°You understand that I don¡¯t believe that. Especially now that I know you can understand my thoughts.¡±

    WHOOPS.

    I didn¡¯t appreciate the flippant tone that single word held. Nonetheless, I needed to eat, but getting this helmet off was going to prove interesting. Not only did I not feel any internal webbing holding my head in place, the suit lacked the locking collar that normal pressure suits had; at least I assumed it did, since I couldn¡¯t feel it choking me.

    A whir echoed, and the helmet folded in on itself, packing down into the neck and shoulders of my pressure suit. Once the helmet was packed, the rest of the armor began folding itself away, packing down into an ovoid resting between my shoulder blades.

    ¡°Did you cut a hole in my clothes for this?¡±

    THAT¡¯S A PART OF THOSE ARMOR SETTINGS I MENTIONED. YOU REALLY SHOULD ASK SOME MORE CLARIFIERS.

    ¡°Do you have a manual I can read? Its hard to ask clarifiers about something when I don''t even know what I need to ask about.¡±

    NOT AS SUCH. OUR TECHNICAL DOCUMENTATION IS PROPERTY OF GRAVITIC SOLUTIONS, AND AS SUCH NEITHER OF US ARE AUTHORIZED TO ACCESS IT. REGARDLESS, WE ARE NOT CONNECTED TO A NETWORK TO ENABLE MANUAL RETRIEVAL.

    I WOULD RECOMMEND WE HEAD TO THE DOCKING BAY. DUSTY STAR WILL NOT BE REFIT IN TIME FOR THE UPCOMING MISSION WITH J1724TZTN, BUT YOU SHOULD START THE WORK BEFORE YOU LEAVE.

    I walked woodenly into my kitchen. So much had happened in the time since I got off my shift, processing any of these massive changes just wasn¡¯t on the table. All I wanted was to eat and sleep. Slapping a pan onto the stove, I pulled out some left over pasta as I turned the induction on. A drizzle of oil went into the pan, and without bothering to wait for anything to heat up I dumped the pasta in.

    CORRECTION. THE LOCAL SYSTEM BLACKOUT HAS BEEN LIFTED, SO IF YOU WOULD LIKE I CAN PROVIDE YOU WITH REFIT OPTIONS BASED OFF OF PROJECTED MISSION REQUIREMENTS AND YOUR PRIOR SEARCHES WITHOUT HAVING TO TRAVEL TO THE DOCKING BAY.

    ¡°I¡¯d rather use a terminal myself for that. Are you able to provide me with information for this spacecraft I¡¯ll have to use in the meantime?¡±

    OF COURSE. WANDERER 6, FULL SPS DESIGNATION 25B-MKN-ERR-ERR, IS A GALAXY CLASS INTERCEPTOR DESIGNED FOR INTER AND EXO-ATMOSPHERIC SHIP TO SHIP AND SHIP TO GROUND COMBAT, AS WELL AS PERSONNEL DELIVERY TO ANY KNOWN SYSTEM WITHIN THE MILKY WAY. IT UTILIZES A WARP SYSTEM DESIGNED SPECIALLY FOR THE WANDERER FAMILY OF CRAFT THAT ALLOWS FOR NEAR INSTANTANEOUS TRAVEL, ALLOWING IMMEDIATE DEPLOYMENT TO POTENTIAL ZONES OF OPERATION. WANDERER 6 CONTAINS A FULL GRAVITY METERED EXERCISE ROOM, SUFFICIENT FOOD PRODUCTION FOR 200% EXTRA CREW, AND ADVANCED ROBOTIC SYSTEMS TO REDUCE CREW REQUIREMENTS. UNLIKE MOST GALAXY CLASS CRAFT, WANDERER 6 ONLY REQUIRES A CREW OF FOUR FOR NORMAL OPERATIONS AND JUST A SINGULAR CREW MEMBER FOR ORBITAL OPERATION SUPPORT. IN ADDITION TO NORMAL CREW QUARTERS, WANDERER 6 CONTAINS REGULAR AND STASIS CELLS FOR VIP AND PRISONER TRANSFER. IN ORDER TO SUPPORT APPROPRIATE COMBAT OPERATIONS, WANDERER 6 SUPPORTS A FULL SMALL ARMS ARMORY IN ADDITION TO ITS SHIPBOARD WEAPONS. I CANNOT BRIEF YOU ON THE COMBAT CAPABILITIES OF WANDERER 6 AT THIS TIME.

    At this point, my pasta was heated enough to be edible. I grabbed a fork off the magnetic wall strip and brought the pot with me to the coffee table in the living room.

    ¡°You said ¡®OUR documentation¡¯. Shouldn¡¯t that be ¡®YOUR documentation¡¯?¡±

    NEGATIVE. OPERATOR INTEGRATION IS A PERMANENT CHANGE. NOT ONLY WOULD MY REMOVAL SEVERELY INJURE YOU, IF NOT KILL YOU, I AM UNABLE TO BE REUSED AFTER INTEGRATION. MANY OPERATORS FAIL TO UNDERSTAND THAT EQUIPMENT WITH SUCH AN IN DEPTH INTEGRATION FUNCTION CLOSER TO WETWARE; I AM NOT VIABLE WITHOUT A HOST. OUR DOCUMENTATION COVERS US IN OUR ENTIRETY.

    ¡°So what you¡¯re telling me is that not only did I get my contract extended indefinitely without my say so, but now I¡¯m saddled with a bio-aug until I die, and I¡¯m not even allowed to know how that aug works or what it can do?¡±

    NO. WELL, YES, YOU AND I ARE ONE UNIT NOW, BUT A LIST OF MY FUNCTIONS SHOULD BE AVAILABLE TO YOU THROUGH THE PROPER CHANNELS. HOW I WORK IS CLASSIFIED THOUGH.

    YOU WILL NEED TO EAT MORE. YOU WILL SOON BEGIN GROWING NEW BONES, LIGAMENTS, AND CONNECTIVE TISSUES TO ENSURE YOU REMAIN AWAKE AND ABLE TO WORK UNDER HIGH G STRESSES AND IN THE CASE OF COLLISIONS, ON TOP OF INCREASING MUSCLE FIBER DENSITY. FOOD INTAKE SHOULD INCREASE BY APPROXIMATELY 500% UNTIL I TELL YOU OTHERWISE.

    ¡°Fucking fantastic.¡± I growled. ¡°And how the hell am I supposed to pay for that? I never budgeted for six people¡¯s worth of food.¡±

    NOW THAT THE NETWORK CONNECTION HAS BEEN RE-ESTABLISHED, I CAN CONFIRM THAT YOUR ACCOUNT HAS BEEN CREDITED WITH THE EXPENDITURES EXPECTED FROM A NEW OPERATOR, WHICH INCLUDES YOUR NEW CALORIC NEEDS.

    Swallowing the last bite of the pasta, I noticed just how hungry I still was. I felt like the dune worm that just couldn¡¯t stop eating from that ancient childrens book they had read to us in Contractor Training. Setting the now empty pan to the side, I shifted the folder I had dropped earlier to get at the tablet underneath. A scan of my thumbprint let me access the device, and with a few quick taps I was looking at my personnel file. My jaw dropped.

    ¡°Fifty million? Who dropped 50 million credits into my account?¡±

    YOUR NEW EMPLOYER. THIS IS YOUR FIRST MONTH¡¯S WAGE, ALONG WITH EXPECTED EXPENDITURES. ONE OF MY JOBS IS TO SUBMIT EXPENSE REPORTS WHEN I HAVE THE PROPER NETWORK CONNECTION, SO ANYTHING FROM FOOD AT A STATION ALL THE WAY UP TO SHIP REFITS (PROVIDED THEY ARE MISSION ESSENTIAL) WILL BE EVENTUALLY REIMBURSED. THIS INITIAL NUMBER IS TO ENABLE YOU TO ENABLE YOUR ASSIGNED TEAM. WE REALLY SHOULD GET DOWN TO THE HANGAR AND LOOK AT THE REFITS YOU¡¯LL NEED FOR DUSTY STAR SO THE WORK CAN BE DONE BEFORE WE RETURN.

    Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

    ¡°Yeah yeah. I¡¯m gonna buy food first. There¡¯s been way too much sprung on me in the past¡­¡± I looked at the time stamp in the upper left corner of the tablet. ¡°¡­three hours, you can all wait for five minutes.¡±

    I WILL INFORM THE TEAM THAT YOU WILL BE AVAILABLE FOR PRE-DEPARTURE INSPECTIONS SHORTLY. THE UPCOMING MISSION IS TIME SENSITIVE, AND DEINOPIDAE HAS ALREADY SENT ME THREE MESSAGES TO HURRY YOU ALONG.

    I elected to not respond, instead taking my time to select my standard order of groceries and duplicating it 5 times. In between adding extra pasta and deciding whether I actually was going to eat that much powdered egg, an ache started to grow behind my left eye. I ignored it at first, but I was only onto the powdered meats when my vision went white for a moment. My sight cleared, and I was immediately greeted with what was clearly a HUD or some kind of augmented vision, because there was a bar which, if I looked straight, seemed to hover just above my nose that proclaimed INCOMING MESSAGE - DEINOPIDAE.

    ¡°Hey, uh. What the fuck is this?¡±

    ONE OF THE VISION CHANGES YOU WERE TOLD ABOUT. IN ADDITION TO A LARGER VISUAL SPECTRUM, I ALSO HAVE AN AUGMENTED VISION MODE, WHERE ANY AUDIO OR VISUAL MESSAGING CAN BE DISPLAYED, CONTEXTUAL NOTES CAN BE WRITTEN OR SAVED, AND RECORDINGS CAN BE TAKEN. THIS IS NOT A COMPLETE LIST, OF COURSE, AND THE LONGER WE ARE TOGETHER THE MORE EFFECTIVE I WILL BECOME AT DISPLAYING, HIGHLIGHTING, AND SAVING THINGS THAT YOU NEED.

    DEINOPIDAE HAS INSISTED THAT HE SPEAK WITH YOU. GOOD LUCK.

    ¡°TUG, I KNOW THIS IS A LOT OF INFO ALL AT ONCE, BUT WE HAVE PLENTY OF TIME FOR YOU TO PROCESS ONCE YOU¡¯RE HANGING IN ORBIT WAITING FOR US TO REJOIN YOU. THAT CAN¡¯T HAPPEN UNTIL YOU GET YOUR ASS IN GEAR AND GET US ALL MOVING. WHATS YOUR HOLD UP?¡±

    ¡°My holdup is having to order 6 times as much food as I¡¯m used to.¡±

    ¡°DAMN, THATS CRAZY. TUG, YOU¡¯RE GOING ON MISSION. WE HAVE PLENTY OF RATIONS, DROP WHATEVER IT IS YOURE DOING AND GET TO HANGAR VICTOR ALPHA TAC ZERO ONE. I¡¯D HATE TO HAVE TO DO IT THIS FAST, BUT I WILL REMIND YOU THAT I HAVE TERMINATION AUTHORITY OVER YOUR CONTRACT. FLY OR DIE, BUCKO.¡±

    ¡°Woah woah woah, slow down. You¡¯re going to kill me if I tell you no?¡±

    ¡°NO, I¡¯LL HAVE YOUR CONTRACT CANCELLED. THEN RUMORS OR OUR EMPLOYERS WILL MAKE YOU HAVE AN ¡®ACCIDENT¡¯; WHOEVER CAN GET TO YOU FIRST, REALLY.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s bullshit.¡±

    ¡°THATS LIFE. YOU¡¯RE A CONTRACTOR. UNTIL YOUR COMPANY SAYS OTHERWISE, THEY OWN YOU. IT SUCKS TUG, BUT THATS JUST HOW IT GOES. NOW, ARE YOU GOING TO COME DO A PRE-FLIGHT ON MY SICK ASS SHIP, OR AM I GETTING A SUB-MISSION AND A NEW PILOT?¡±

    ¡°I need to sleep first, I just finished a 24. Having me fly now would be dangerous for the ship and every person on board.¡±

    TRY AGAIN. YOUR IMPLANT IS A REGULATOR TOO, YOULL BE AWAKE AND ALERT UNTIL YOU DECIDE OTHERWISE, AND I¡¯M DECIDING FOR YOU RIGHT NOW. GET TO VA-01 NOW.

    I didn¡¯t bother replying as I saw a small speaker icon in the corner of my vision flash, then fade away. I just wanted a nap, but I really wasn¡¯t tired.

    ON TOP OF REGULATING YOUR SLEEP, I CAN ALSO MAKE SLEEP MORE EFFECTIVE FOR YOU. THE THREE HOURS YOU JUST LOST SHOULD HAVE ACTED CLOSER TO ABOUT SIX HOURS OF SLEEP.

    ¡°How? That doesn¡¯t even make sense. That should be impossible.¡±

    YUP.

    Not the most encouraging of replies, but if some kind of tech magic meant I needed to sleep less, I wasn¡¯t going to look a gift ship in the reactor. I got up, snagged my pan off the table in front of me, and went back to the kitchen. I didn¡¯t want dirty dishes turning into a pile of mold while I was gone.

    ¡°How long is this mission supposed to be?¡±

    GIVEN THAT IT IS NOT AN EXPLORATORY, I WOULD HAZARD TO SAY THAT YOUR AVERAGE MISSION LENGTH IS TWO WEEKS. MISSIONS OF AN EXPLORATORY NATURE LAST AS LONG AS NEEDED.

    I left the water running in the sink just long enough to heat up, and quickly scrubbed the pan clean. 50 million. I was still blown away by the sheer size of the number that had been so casually dumped into my accounts. And it would be reimbursed for what I spent on refits? Unbelievable.

    I dried the pan and put it away, then started walking to the docking bay.

    ¡°What am I supposed to call you? I¡¯m a little too old to have any imaginary friend that doesn¡¯t have a name.¡±

    WE BOTH SHARE THE DESIGNATION THERIDION, BUT WITH YOUR OTHER NAME OF TUGGER, I WOULD PROPOSE THAT BETWEEN THE TWO OF US, I CALL YOU TUGGER AND YOU REFER TO ME AS THERIDION. WE ARE OFFICIALLY CONSIDERED ONE UNIT BY EVERYONE ELSE THOUGH, SO EXPECT TO BE CALLED THERIDION DURING IMPERSONAL OR OFFICIAL MATTERS.

    ¡°That makes sense, I guess. Are you able to take and maintain notes for me?¡±

    THAT IS ONE OF MY FUNCTIONS, YES. AND BEFORE YOU ASK, I AM ABLE TO COLLATE THOSE NOTES AND TRANSFER THEM TO OTHERS. I HAVE FULL LOCAL COMMUNICATIONS CAPABILITIES, INCLUDING NARROW-BAD AND BROAD-BAND RADIO, LASER, AND X-RAY BROADCAST. X-RAY RECEPTION IS BASED ON A NUMBER OF FACTORS, BUT YOU SHOULD NEVER NEED TO CONCERN YOURSELF WITH THAT.

    ¡°Fantastic. Make a note of what I want for my initial refit of Dusty Star. First, I want a cockpit rebuild to keep me from having to climb over the seat. A body sleeve cockpit would be ideal as long as I can control all of the ship functions without having to leave, but not everything needs to be tied in so long as I have easy ingress and egress from the cockpit regardless of applied gravity. I¡¯d also like more robust organic reclamation, specifically focused on atmospheric water reclamation. Higher compression fuel tanks, more efficient deep space engines, higher efficiency RCS thrusters, headset integrated avionics, hardened docking connectors, a communications suite capable of three channel GCOM, XCOM, LCOM, and RCOM as well as emergency QCOM. Anything I¡¯m missing?¡±

    YOU WILL NEED ATMOSPHERIC FLIGHT CAPABILITIES, AS WELL AS ORBITAL AND SUB-ORBITAL DROP CAPABILITIES, AND MORE PERSONNEL HOUSING. I HAVE ADDED THESE TO THE LIST.

    ¡°Works for me. Anything else?¡±

    I WOULD ALSO RECOMMEND FOOD PRODUCTION. AEROPONICS WOULD BE A LIKELY CHOICE.

    ¡°Add it. Since you seem to know, is there enough time before I have to do this pre-flight to schedule these refits?

    I DO NOT BELIEVE SO. THERE IS A SCHEDULED MISSION BRIEFING AS WELL. THERE WILL LIKELY BE TIME AFTER THAT.

    As the bulkhead to the docking bay I had been directed to slip open, I realized I had been so wrapped up in dreaming up my perfect refit that I had walked to the tram, sat through the whole ride, gotten off at the right stop, and walked to the bay¡¯s bulkhead without noticing. That seemed¡­ unlikely.

    YOU WERE BUSY, SO I HELPED MAKE SURE YOU GOT TO THE RIGHT PLACE.

    ¡°Again, with the mind reading. Not fucking cool.¡±

    I CANNOT TURN IT OFF. IT WOULD SEEM THAT DEINOPIDAE IS WAITING FOR YOU.

    I shook my head as I walked into the bay. An impatient boss was something I could deal with, but a literal brain worm was a step to far, no matter how nice their massive ship was.

    It was, I had to admit, a beautiful spacecraft. Sleek black lines with plenty of curves and clearly defined wings immediately showed it had atmospheric capabilities, while the turreted engines lining the body showed that six degree motion might even be possible in atmosphere. The landing gear were relatively squat, running in a four by four grid presumably to support the ship in the middle, but the ship was so large that I would still be able to walk under it without having to duck or stoop at all. I could see a docking clamp roughly centered on the belly that didn¡¯t look like it extended very far, and as I got closer I saw that the open hatches scattered liberally over the craft¡¯s body were not the serivce ports I had initially dismissed as unimportant, but were instead concealed weapons bay. Many were turrets, which I assumed were either chemically or magnetically propelled ballistics, but I also saw internal missile silos and aerodynamic missile racks. As I got closer, I was able to make out small black lumps which blended in with the rest of the ship, but I wasn¡¯t sure what they were for. A cockpit was visible on the front of the craft, but between the polarization of the sight glass and the angle I couldn¡¯t see the layout. Deinopidae, who¡¯s real name I still didn¡¯t know was standing next to the landing gear closest to the bulkhead I had entered through, arms crossed. He had a sidearm attached to the outside of his left thigh, presumably magnetized to his armor, and a rifle was hanging from a strap to the middle of his chest plate.

    ¡°Took you long enough Tug. You¡¯ll have to pre-flight later, we have a mission briefing less than five. Theridion, I¡¯m authorizing you to download all applicable flight and maintenance manuals for SPS 25B-MKN-GVS-BLJ, and all the associated munitions manuals. Get Tug spun up as soon as possible.

    broadcasting

    UNDERSTOOD DEINOPIDAE.

    terminate broadcast

    Deinopidae tapped at his wrist, then turned on his heel as he started walking to the platform that had started to slowly descend from the ship, just aft of the docking clamp. ¡°Let¡¯s go Tug, you can¡¯t miss this brief.¡±

    TUGGER, I HAVE FLIGHT MANUALS DOWNLOADED. I WILL PRODUCE TRAINING MODULES FOR YOU TO RUN THROUGH AFTER THE BRIEF.

    ¡°Let¡¯s this this done with then.¡±

    The platform stopped just above the hangar floor, and began rising as soon as I followed Deinopidae on. I assumed he had told someone to drop the lift and they were watching from inside, and as the lift rose back into the ship I was proven right; the person that I was still assuming was Deinopidae¡¯s sister was at a control panel with a fish eye lens view centered on the docking clamp, the lift platform, and roughly a quarter of the bottom of the spacecraft. She had similar armament to her brother, except her rifle was larger and on her back.

    ¡°Howdy Tug!¡± She said brightly. ¡°Glad to see your integration didn¡¯t kill you.¡±

    ¡°Dysdera, we have a brief. You should already be in the boardroom.¡±

    ¡°Fuck off Dean, I¡¯m never late. Besides, Tugger needs someone to talk to aside from you. We both know Recluse isn¡¯t one for conversation.¡±

    Deinopidae, who¡¯s name was apparently Dean, didn¡¯t respond as he started at me expectantly. I, of course, was too busy being enamored by the apparent cargo bay I found myself in. Aside from the large hole in the floor for the docking clamp entrance, I could see that the lift platform could be partially retracted at an angle into the cargo bay, but I wasn¡¯t sure why. There was also dozens of differently sized ammunition tracks running on the walls and through the ceiling, clearly meant to feed all of the weapons I had seen before. An elevator was in the aft of the cargo bay, and the forward section was occupied by a door labeled with ¡®ARMORY¡¯. White light strips embedded in the ceiling and the floor created clearly demarcated zones for cargo and personnel, and the floor of the bay was inundated with roller rails and strap tie downs for securing cargo. The sleek lines on the outside of the ship clearly gave way to simplicity and military necessity for the interior, which I appreciated as a pilot and a technician.

    ¡°Elevator, Tug. Briefing is starting soon.¡± Dean said as he headed to the elevator, Dysdera giving me a light push on the shoulder as she walked past.

    ¡°Better keep up. Dean gets grumpy when he¡¯s late.¡±

    I was too fascinated by the cargo bay to respond, following the pair into the elevator.

    As we stepped in, Dysdera tapped the back of her left wrist twice and announced ¡°Personnel Suite¡±. As soon as she the elevator doors drew together as a bulkhead between the elevator and the cargo bay snapped closed, and the elevator shifted as it rose.

    Just a few seconds of awkward silence in the elevator later, and the other two were rushing out the door.

    TUGGER, THE BRIEFING BEGINS IN 60 SECONDS. FOLLOW THE HIGHLIGHTED LINE.

    As that was printed in my HUD, I saw a bright blue line draw itself along the ground, following the path that Dean and Dysdera were hurrying along. The line went straight down the hallway that terminated at the elevator. Passing two closed doorways labeled as ¡®LAVATORY¡¯ on the left and ¡®A BAY ACCESS¡¯ on the right, the other two ducked into the second doorway on the left, which happened to be labeled ¡®BRIEF ROOM 1¡¯. The door opposite read ¡®BRIEF ROOM 2¡¯, but was written in red, unlike the white text of all the other door labels. Making a mental note for myself for later, I stepped through the doorway to see a small circular table with eight chairs around it. The one who had thrown the spider thing MY NAME IS THERIDION at me was already sitting. What his name was, I couldn¡¯t remember, but I didn¡¯t see whether or not he was armed. He was armored like the other two, and he still had his helmet up. I was willing to bet he had kept it on the whole time he had been on the station.

    Since the three team members I had met so far were seated, I took a seat for myself. Before I was able to ask if I needed anything, my vision began to fade to black, as I saw text print itself across my vision while everything else went black.

    INCOMING TRANSMISSION

 CHAPTER 5

    INCOMING TRANSMISSION

    This message is for use only by Gravitic Solutions and Gravitic Solutions authorized sub-contractors. If you are receiving this message in error, you are required to report your receipt of this message to Gravitic Solutions Customer Support in person, and destroy this message, all copies of this message, and all hardware that was associated with this message. Failure to report receipt of this message as prescribed above will result in swift and decisive action IAW GS-SOP-IA-FMR-34-997 Paragraph 4.A.(5).(k).

    BEGIN TRANSMISSION

    The Edidna system contains 4 planets and a degraded Oort Cloud. Edidna III is suspected to be the current base location of Operation Blacklight target code-named Grasshopper. It is suspected that Grasshopper is actively working to violate intra-galactic IP law by reverse engineering Gravitic Solutions proprietary information with stolen information and/or technology. Operation Blacklight is authorized to deny all corporate espionage and disallowed reverse engineering efforts with prejudice. Full planetary briefing to follow.

    Pursuant to Operation Blacklight mandate, Team J1724TZTN is instructed to deny Target Grasshopper from continuing reverse engineering of any GS IP, or disseminating any partial or completed research thereof. Use of force in any necessary local measure is authorized on a team command level. Use of force at or exceeding a system wide effect is authorizable by third order local arm quadrant subdivision supervision or higher.

    Expected hostilities in transit are negligible. Orbital defenses were not spotted, but may have been developed further since last check. Anti-air capabilities were present but under-developed; general stealth procedures should suffice for personnel delivery. Anti-personnel capabilities are unknown at this time. Orbital scans should provide sufficient intelligence to ensure fireteam safety. Target has previously been apprehended by Blacklight operatives, and should be expected to violently resist capture.

    The above information is for use only by Gravitic Solutions and Gravitic Solutions authorized sub-contractors. If you have received this message in error, you are required to report your receipt of this message to Gravitic Solutions Customer Support in person, and destroy this message, all copies of this message, and all hardware that was associated with this message. Failure to report receipt of this message will result in swift and decisive action IAW GS-SOP-IA-FMR-34-997 Paragraph 4.A.(5).(k).

    END TRANSMISSION

    ¡ª-¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª

    My HUD flickered as my vision returned, once again showing instead the small table myself and the three armored operatives were sitting around.

    ¡°Well good. Looks easy this time.¡± Dean nodded, then looked at me. ¡°Theridion, get Tug spun up on atmo evasives, munitions use, and sub-orbital insertions. He should be good to go on everything else he needs.¡±

    broadcasting

    Understood. Generating course material.

    terminate broadcast

    ¡°Tug, any questions? We¡¯ll have a tactical brief in orbit when we have a better idea of what we¡¯re dealing with.¡±

    I sat silent, stunned. I was having a hard time wrapping my head around what I had just heard.

    ¡°What, uh¡­ what¡¯s ¡®system wide¡¯ force entail?¡±

    ¡°Oh.¡± Dean chuckled. ¡°Normally that classified, but usually it means one of two things. Either we get direct support from a GS battle group, or we dump a sun probe and set off a supernova. Whichever nerd designed it must have enjoyed classical lit, because he named is a ¡®novaspark¡¯ after some book he read. What a nerd.¡±

    ¡°You kill systems? What the fuck!¡±

    ¡°Get over it Tug. You get paid to ignore whatever moral code you may have, just like us. You get paid more, in fact, so go get your refit scheduled or I¡¯ll strap you to the front of a novaspark and dump it in deep space. Theridion probably isn¡¯t done building those training modules, so you have a little bit of time.¡± Dean turned to the other two, still seated at the table. ¡°Either of you have any questions? Looks pretty straight forward to me.¡±

    Dysdera made a noncommittal noise, while the other one¡­ Recluse?¡­ shook his head without making a sound. Without even looking at me, Dean said ¡°Tugger. Go. Theres other pilots on this station I could use.¡±

    Flustered and speechless, I left the briefing room, the door closing behind me. Without any prying eyes, I leaned against the wall next to the door. I needed to take a moment.

    ¡ª-¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª

    ¡°You, brother of mine, are an idiot.¡± I felt bad for the new pilot. He was clearly a life-long spacer, sticking close to possible handholds in case of a gravity loss of explosive decompression, and his scalp had a patch of hair missing where he had clearly had some kind of traumatic injury. Either a heavy dose of radiation when his shielding failed, or he¡¯d been through a pirate attack or two. I would have bet on the pirate attack, given how little he had reacted to our guns and how quickly he had jumped to violence when he realized we were in his rooms. I, and Dean and Recluse, had found out the hard way just how little pirates fucked around on this frontier.

    ¡°Excuse me?¡± Dean rejoined. ¡°The kid doesn¡¯t want to work with us, but he¡¯s the best option we have. Recluse is too quiet to be the asshole, and you don¡¯t like doing it. I don¡¯t want to kill him, but if that¡¯s what it takes, its my job. Theres a reason you refused this command, Dera.¡±

    I sighed. ¡°I know that Dean, but come on. You couldn¡¯t think of a single better way to motivate him then to threaten to kill him twice, and once after telling him that sparks exist? Those are terrifying, and we don¡¯t even have any on board! At best, it wasn¡¯t necessary, but come on. It was just wrong.¡±

    ¡°Then what the fuck do you want me to do, Dera?¡± I¡¯d gotten Dean¡¯s ire up, just like I wanted to. He was an unusual guy, but I knew my twin well enough to know he thought better when he got angry. Being on the edge of losing control made him step back. It normally did, at least. Tugger and his treatment would be no different, I was sure. ¡°It¡¯s been surprise after surprise for him since he docked yesterday, and the only way I have to keep him going the direction we want is to keep him off balance.¡±

    ¡°He is outside this room. You both ought to watch your words.¡± Recluse ground out. I hadn¡¯t heard him say more than a sentence at a time since our last mission started to go sideways, which shocked me into not responding to Dean. He was, it seemed similarly shocked into silence.

    ¡°Is he trying to listen in?¡±

    I thought Dean¡¯s question was a little ridiculous, given that briefing rooms were hermetically sealed, but he was the boss for a reason.

    ¡°No.¡±

    That was much more like Recluse.

    ¡°Good.¡± Dean was silent for a moment, then looked at me. ¡°I¡¯ll be a little nicer to him, but he¡¯s new, and we just don¡¯t have the levers to push him into working with us right now. I¡¯ll lighten up once he¡¯s more compliant

    ¡°That¡¯s all well and good Dean, but he¡¯s no use to us if he¡¯s dead. Besides, I thought you don¡¯t make empty threats? You know damn well we don¡¯t have a novaspark.¡±

    ¡°Eh, we can get one. Recluse, is he gone yet? We can¡¯t stay in here and chat forever.¡±

    ¡°Yes.¡±

    ¡°Ok. Get to work. All of us need to run a few SUPER HERO sims. Who knows how good of a pilot Tug will be if we¡¯re taking fire.¡±

    ¡ª-¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª

    The elevator was just closing as I watched the three armored figures file out of the briefing room. I didn¡¯t care, since none of them seemed to head my way.

    ¡°Theridion, are you able to provide that list of refit requirements while you¡¯re making whatever training material? I don¡¯t know what your multitasking capabilities are.

    ABSOLUTELY TUGGER. I¡¯VE TAKEN THE LIBERTY OF REQUESTING A TRAM TO SPEED YOU ALONG. THESE SIMULATIONS WILL MAKE YOU PROFICIENT WITH THE WANDERER 6 AND ITS ASSOCIATED MUNITIONS, BUT IT WILL TAKE A FAIR AMOUNT OF TIME FOR YOU TO BE COMBAT READY. I WOULD PREFER YOU HAVE THE MOST TIME POSSIBLE. DYING SEEMS LIKE QUITE A NEGATIVE FOR US BOTH.

    This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work.

    ¡°What¡¯s the time frame for this tram then?¡±

    NINETY SECONDS. THEY WILL WAIT FOR YOU IF NEED BE.

    ¡°They can wait then.¡± I looked down at the vac suit I was wearing. I had had Theridion strip all the armor that it had given me during its initialization. ¡°Uparmor me. Whatever the highest level is, but no helmet.¡±

    There was no response, but armor began to silently unfold from my back, each piece melding seamlessly with my vac suit and its neighboring pieces, until I was covered from my chin down in matte-black plating that looked to absorb every photon that hit it.

    ¡°This is it?¡± I was a little disappointed, honestly. I was hoping for something like the plate armor those mythical knights from Earth, like King Arthur or Knight General Puller had worn.

    SHORT OF BEING DUMPED IN A SUN, THERE IS NO KNOWN ENVIRONMENT YOU CANNOT WITHSTAND WITH THIS SUIT. YOUR ARMOR WILL STOP BALLISTICS OF ANY SIZE BELONG SHIPBORNE AUTOCANNONS, AND ENSURES YOU ARE UNABLE TO INJURE YOURSELF DURING, LETS CALL IT, STRENUOUS ACTIVITIES. EXPLOSIVES AND SPEED ARE YOUR LARGEST ISSUES, BUT THE EXTRA CONNECTIVE TISSUES AND INTERNAL ORGAN SUPPORT YOU ARE GROWING WILL HELP TO SOLVE THOSE ISSUES. I DO NOT HAVE THE BANDWIDTH TO REFORMAT THE PLATING AESTHETICS NOW, BUT I FORSEE SUFFICIENT DOWNTIME EITHER AFTER THIS MISSION, OR DURING THE MISSION WHILE WE WAIT IN ORBIT.

    ¡±Guess I can¡¯t be too upset then.¡° The elevator doors slid open. I took a breath, then strode across the cargo bay and into the armory. A placard next to the door read RESTRICTED ACCESS. AUTHORIZED COMBAT PERSONNEL ONLY. I figured since I had been cut loose on the ship and the door was open, I could at least go take a look. Given that I was apparently the pilot and the mechanic, I¡¯d have to come in here to fix things anyway. As I crossed the threshold, I saw the walls lined with grey lockers which were highlighted either green, yellow, or red in my vision.

    YOU CAN TAKE WEAPONS FROM THE GREEN LOCKERS TUGGER. THE YELLOW ONES ARE EMPTY, BUT NOT OFF LIMITS ONCE RETURNED. RED NEEDS PERMISSION FROM DEINOPIDAE, UNLESS YOU USE YOUR TECHNICIAN OVERRIDE. I WOULD SUGGEST AGAINST USING YOUR OVERRIDE TO RETRIEVE WEAPONRY.

    ¡°Ok then.¡± I looked in the first locker and found it was full of what were clearly zero-g focused weapons. They looked like regular rifles, but seemed to have exhaust ports with closed irises scattered over the weapon. I started at them for a second, and then the particular weapon I was inspecting became highlighted blue. A description popped up as well.

    SPACESHOT

    SBR

    10.8x45MM CASELESS

    20RD STACKABLE MAG

    THE SPACESHOT IS A PROPRIETARY WEAPON DEVELOPED BY GRAVITIC ARMS. WHEN USED WITH THE PROPER LINKAGE TO AN AUTHORIZED OPERATOR, THE SPACESHOT WILL NOT ONLY VARIATE GAS RELEASE ANGLES TO MAINTAIN TARGET ACQUISITION, BUT WILL INFORM PERSONNEL MOVEMENT SYSTEMS ON APPROPRIATE VECTOR MATCHING TO ENSURE ACCURACY AND INCREASE LETHALITY. EXTENSIVE USE WITHIN ANY FORM OF GRAVITY WELL WILL RESULT IN WEAPON SYSTEM DEGRADATION. INTELLIGENT MAGAZINES ALLOW FOR MAGAZINES TO BE STACKED TO FEED EACH OTHER, UP TO A STACK OF 10 MAGAZINES, OR UP TO 200 ROUNDS OF AMMUNITION.

    I elected to not take a Spaceshot, given that I would be in the station¡¯s gravity and I didn¡¯t want to break anything. Even if I wasn¡¯t participating, station movements like what was starting was when pirates that had spilled through the cracks usually tried to take over. I had dealt with it unarmed beofre, but having a weapon always made me feel better.

    I closed the Spaceshot locker, and moved to the next one down. Even though it was highlighted red, I was still curious. Unfortunately, it was locked. I took my hand away, and heard a click. I looked around and didn¡¯t see anyone, so I slowly moved my hand closer to the locker again. Click. Whatever security was in the Armory must know what I did and didn¡¯t have access to and was actively locking doors. Oh well.

    The next green highlighted locker had the same chunky handguns that Dean and Dysdera were carrying. The weapons were split into two groups. One group had two empty slots, presumably what the siblings were carrying, while the other group was full. The only difference I could see was that one half used the classic magazine loaded into the grip, while the other half had some kind of feeding belt that led to what appeared to be a hip pouch. Focusing on one of the handguns brought up a description the same way to the other gun.

    FANG

    HANDGUN

    9x25MM HYBRID CASE

    25RD DOUBLESTACK MAG, LINKAGE FED

    THE FANG IS A PROPRIETARY WEAPON DEVELOPED BY GRAVITIC ARMS. IT UTILIZES A PROPRIETARY 9x25MM ROUND MADE OF A COPPER JACKETED STEEL PENETRATOR CONTAINED WITHIN A HYBRID CASE UTILIZING BRASS AND TUNGSTANIUM. THE TUNGSTANIUM SERVES AS BOTH THE PROPELLANT AND THE PRESSURE VESSEL. PULLING THE TRIGGER USES PIEZOELECTRICITY TO ENERGIZE THE TUNGSTANIUM BACKING CUP OF THE ROUND, CREATING AN ANTI-GRAVITY FIELD WHICH APPLIES THE EQUIVALENT OF APPROXIMATELY 150,000 PSI OF CHAMBER PRESSURE. THE BARREL OF THE FANG IS DESIGNED SUCH THAT IT ALLOWS THAT FIELD TO PROPAGATE, ENSURING EACH ROUND LEAVES THE WEAPON AT NO LESS THAN 10,000 FPS, OR MACH 8.8. WHEN ATTACHED TO A LINKAGE FEEDING SYSTEM, THE SPENT CARTRIDGES THAT ARE CAPTURED MAY BE REUSED NEARLY ENDLESSLY. THIS WEAPON IS NOT RECOMMENDED FOR SHIPBOARD USE.

    I snagged one of the linkage fed pistols, the hip pouch attaching itself to a newly formed divot in the lower back of my armor. The linkage snaked up along my back, around my shoulder and arm to my palm, where the weapon itself had a rectangular slot, while a second linkage went from the weapon¡¯s slide into the thigh plate the Fang held on to and ran back to the pouch. I wasn¡¯t a fan, so I pulled the pouch off, waited for the linkages to retract back where they had rested in the pouch and swapped it for one of the regular, mag fed pistols. Under the pistol sat 7 magazines and a spare round. I was a little startled to see such a large amount of ammunition set aside for each weapon, but the extra round to chamber told me exactly why. This ship, this crew, were ready for war. Carrying the novaspark thing that Dean had talked about was insane, but it was clearly a last resort kind of weapons. 176 rounds for a sidearm, probably more if it has an external ammo pouch? These people went to war every day. The next locker I could open, which was yellow, proved my thoughts correct.

    SHOWDOWN

    CANNON

    VARIABLE

    VARIABLE

    THE SHOWDOWN IS A PROPRIETARY WEAPON DEVELOPED BY GRAVITIC ARMS. AN 8 GAUGE FOREARM MOUNTED CANNON, THE SHOWDOWN MAKES USE OF ITS OPEN CHAMBER DESIGN BY ACCEPTING MAGAZINES, LINKAGE FEEDS, AND HAND-FED ROUNDS. DESIGNED TO BE MISSION-FLEXIBLE, THE SHOWDOWN HAS HAD MUNITIONS DESIGNED FOR IT TO MEET ANY AND ALL MISSION CRITERIA. BIRDSHOT, SLUGS, GYRO-JET MUNITIONS, PROGRAMMABLE GRENADES, FLARES, AND LESS-THAN-LETHAL ROUNDS ARE ALL EASILY PROCURED FOR USE. SPECIAL MANUFACTURE ROUNDS FOR ANY USE CAN ALSO BE UTILIZED. THE SHOWDOWN IS MEANT TO BE THE ULTIMATE NOD TO PERFECT ADAPTABILITY.

    The locker has space for six of the weapons, taking up the upper portion of the locker, while drawers that were so deep they must have extended into the superstructure behind the Armory filled the bottom half of the locker. The cannons were shaped like the armor coating my forearm, if bulkier, and one had already been taken. The drawers each had a label with a string of letters what they contained. Only two drawers, one labeled with ¡®F¡¯ and another labeled with ¡®I-F¡¯ were empty. A chart on the locker door explained the labels, so I knew that ¡®F¡¯ meant ¡®Frangible¡¯ and ¡®I-F¡¯ meant ¡®Incendiary Frangible¡¯.

    TUGGER, I WOULD NOT RECOMMEND NON-FRANGIBLE ROUNDS IN A SHIPBOARD OR STATION SETTING, ESPECIALLY WITH THIS WEAPON. IT WILL GO POORLY FOR EVERYONE INVOLVED.

    ¡°Got it.¡± There was nothing else labeled as frangible, so I left the forearm mounted weapon where it was at and looked into the next locker. I was greeted with just two rifles, each longer than I was tall. The scope on each rifle was similarly massive, each at least 3 feet long and clearly integrated with the rifle. There was no ammunition or magazines in the locker, so I brought up the description for the rifle.

    HUBBLE

    DESIGNATED MARKSMAN RIFLE

    12.9x60MM VARIABLE PAYLOAD

    5RD MAGAZINE

    THE HUBBLE IS A PROPRIETARY WEAPON DEVELOPED BY GRAVITIC ARMS. THE HUBBLE UTILIZES IT¡¯S OPERATORS TACTICAL INFORMATION DOWNLINK TO REACH OUT A SURGICALLY REMOVE TARGETS WITH VARIABLE PAYLOAD, OPTIONALLY ROCKET PROPELLED 12.9MM AMMUNITION. STANDARD BALLISTIC AMMUNITION IS GUIDED BY AUTOMATIC TARGETING SOLUTIONS AND AIM ADJUSTMENTS MADE WITH INTEGRATED SERVO SYSTEMS CONTROLLED BY A COMPUTER BUILT INTO THE HUBBLE¡¯S SCOPE. WHEN ROCKET PROPELLED AMMUNITION IS CHOSEN, HUBBLE OPERATORS CAN RETAIN BALLISTIC LETHALITY UP TO FIVE MILES IN ATMOSPHERE AT A STANDARD GRAVITY. PAYLOADS RANGE FROM STANDARD BALL AMMUNITION TO SGRPNEIAP ROUNDS. IF IT FITS IN THE BULLET, THE HUBBLE WILL PUT IT THROUGH SOMEONE¡¯S FOREHEAD.

    The next locker was not a new weapon, but ammunition drawers for the Hubble in a similar layout to the Showdown, sans anything frangible. Not a surprise to me, since the station CQC I¡¯d been subjected to would absolutely not be the place for this rifle to shine. The chart that outlined the meaning of each ammunition type label also showed how to disengage the barrel on the Hubble, allowing the rifle to collapse; the locking lugs retracted to let the barrel move just below the bolt carrier and be pushed all the way to the end of the stock, cutting the rifle¡¯s length in half.

    Only one locker was left that was green for me, but the locker next to the Hubble ammunition was orange, unlike any other locker. ¡°Theridion?¡±

    YOU CAN LOOK, BUT YOU WON¡¯T BE ABLE TO REMOVE THE WEAPON. I WOULD SUSPECT IT IS BECAUSE IT IS A HAZARD YOU NEED TO KNOW OF AS A TECHNICIAN, BUT I DON¡¯T KNOW WHAT IS IN THE LOCKER UNTIL YOU OPEN IT. OR NOT.

    Naturally, I opened the locker.

    GOD RAY

    HEAVY MUNITION

    FUSION CONTAINMENT CELL

    5RD WHEEL

    THE GOD RAY IS A PROPRIETARY WEAPON DEVELOPED BY GRAVITIC ARMS. EACH PULL OF THE TRIGGER RELEASES A BLAST OF STARFIRE IN THE DIRECTION OF AIM. PROLONGED OPERATOR EXPOSURE HAS RESULTED IN SEVERE SIDE EFFECTS. OPERATORS SHOULD LIMIT USAGE TO ONE WHEEL OF FUSION CELLS PER STANDARD WEEK. USAGE IN EXCESS OF RECOMMENDED LEVELS MAY RESULT IN HAIR LOSS, SKIN GROWTHS, ACCELERATED CANCER GROWTH, MEMORY LOSS, AND DEATH. REAL WORLD APPLICATION OF THE GOD RAY SHOULD ONLY BE CONDUCTED DURING LIVE FIRE EVENTS, NEVER TRAINING. TRAINING WITH THIS WEAPON SHALL BE CONDUCTED ONLY WITHIN A VIRTUAL TRAINING SIMULATION. THIS WEAPON IS NOT RECOMMENDED FOR SHIPBOARD USE.

    The shoulder mounted mess of wires, capacitors and lenses was terrifying. In no world would I ever be comfortable firing one of those, much less using a whole five cell wheel. The wheels were stacked on top of each other from the bottom to the top of the locker, nominally secured by five rods which stuck through voids in the wheel. It didn¡¯t look like sufficient support for fusion cells to me; I¡¯d be flying a little more carefully in the future as long as those were on my ship. Gingerly, I closed the locker and double checked it was latched. Terrifying.

    Trying and failing to put the literal nuclear bomb in the armory out of my mind, I opened the last locker and saw it was arranged in four columns of cubbyholes. The far left column had five spiked balls opened on an internal hinge, with space for a core to be inserted. The other columns each had colored cubbyholes filled with a massive assortment of these cores. The locker door, just like previous weapons, had a chart that outlined the color coding. With nothing else in the locker standing out, I looked at the inspection details.

    CHESTNUT

    VARIABLE

    GRENADE

    SINGLE USE

    THE CHESTNUT IS A PROPRIETARY WEAPON DEVELOPED BY GRAVITIC ARMS. THE CHESTNUT IS A PROGRAMMABLE, VARIABLE USE, MULTI-ROLE GRENADE HOUSING. BY SWAPPING MUNITION LOADS WITHIN THE HOUSING OF THE CHESTNUT, EITHER DURING MISSION PREP OR UNDER LIVE FIRE CONDITIONS, THE CHESTNUT MAY SERVE AS EM COVER, VARIABLE LENGTH FLASHBANG, FRAGMENTATION, INCENDIARY, OR AS A CBRN DELIVERY DEVICE. OPERATORS USING THE CHESTNUT MUST BE AWARE OF THE INHERENT RISKS TO THEIR PERSON AND THEIR TEAM IF UTILIZING ANY CBRN LOADS.

    CBRN loads. Huh.

    Obviously, the God Ray and the options baked into the DMR¡­ uh¡­

    THE HUBBLE.

    Right. The Hubble and its variable payloads, and the God Ray should have clued me in that conventional warfare wasn¡¯t the bread and butter for this crew. Dirty grenades were so outside of my wheelhouse, I couldn¡¯t even form an opinion.

    YOU ALSO DON¡¯T HAVE TIME TO FORM ONE. YOUR RIDE IS HERE, AND THE DOCKMASTER HAS BEEN INFORMED THAT YOU ARE INBOUND FOR A COMPLETE REWORK. YOUR FANG IS MORE THAN ENOUGH SECURITY FOR YOU ON THIS STATION. YOU HAVE BUILT-IN OFFENSIVE CAPABILITIES IN YOUR ARMOR. I CAN TELL YOU ABOUT THEM ON THE TRAM.

    ¡°Fine. But you need to stop reading my fucking thoughts.¡±

    I QUITE LITERALLY CANNOT. YOU¡¯LL NEED TO LIVE WITH IT.

    I didn¡¯t bother responding. This spider in my head knew how I felt about that response as I walked to the cargo lift and exited the ship. Besides, I was looking forward to ordering this refit too much to argue about something I couldn¡¯t fix yet.

 CHAPTER 6

    Steven stood up, stoically refusing to acknowledge the pain from his aging knees and back as he watched the indicator lights on his gravity machine. Steady green across the board. He nodded, then chinned the toggle inside of his suit¡¯s helmet.

    ¡°Anti-gravity materials research, material version 3.5.1.7. Initial power-up shows positive results. Suit systems show .78g. Controller setting is currently .75g. Further calibration, testing and comparison to OEM setups are required. It is my belief that my current tungstanium formula is, if not precisely what Gravitic sells, close enough to produce replicable results. Radiation shielding tests are of the utmost priority once proper calibration is achieved.¡±

    Toggling the recording off, Steven fiddled with the dials on the hunk of engineering in front of him until his suit showed 1.03g. A few minutes of watching gauges and energy readouts, and he was satisfied that nothing would explode. Tapping his way through menus on the smart pad built into the forearm of his suit, Steven heard the space around him began to pressurize, irises over already sealed ports closing for a secondary sealing protection layer in case of leaks. His suit depressurized, and Steven popped his helmet. Station air was still stale, but better than being in his suit. Looking around, Steven knew there was still far too much work to be done.

    He had made this asteroid into his home, digging out the interior of the metal rich hunk of rock. More of a moon than an asteroid, Steven¡¯s newest makeshift home sat inside of the interior ring system around an unnamed planet in an unnamed system.The ring system wound around a binary planet made of two nearly identical gas giants which orbited each other. Given the absolute size of the ring-bound body, Steven had hollowed it out until it was just a 50 meter thick shell of rock, giving him the same volume of an exploratory orbital station without any of the radiation shielding concerns.

    His powerplant, atmosphere control, and initial lab had been set up quickly. A tethered orbital body was how Steven interacted with the outside world; as a newly explored system, even if it was unnamed, the system still had a small amount of through-traffic, so Steven had little problem acquiring the rarer materials he could not process himself. His ship, She Dances At Night, had the facilities aboard to process raw space rock and spit out not just refined ores, but circuitry, structural components, and, most importantly, the parts needed for more refined processing and fabrication equipment. As a researcher who preferred to reverse engineer large corporations otherwise protected designs, Steven found that being able to leave and re-bootstrap wherever he could get raw resources was an absolutely invaluable bit of flexibility.

    Aside from his admittedly over zealously equipped lab, Steven hadn¡¯t spent nearly as much time as he would have liked building up his living space. He had lived in the moon shell he dug himself for over 3 years, and the most he had done for decoration was laying down steel floor paneling so that he didn¡¯t have to bounce off of bare rock. Getting a handle on his tungstanium was, in his mind, the perfect excuse to actually build out this satellite into an actual, usable space station. There was even a possibility that he could sell the place to a mining group once he was finished with it.

    The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

    Steven looked down at his suits smartpad. He had autonomous mining delivering practically everything he needed to make gravitic flooring, but the exotic material that allowed tungstanium to work was too rare and delicate to collect with the rude robotics Steven could produce on site. No, the small amounts of this material had to be collected by hand. Refining could be done with the equipment he had brought originally, so there was no real issue there, but mining carefully enough to not disrupt any of what Steven had taken to calling gravitonium meant lots of spacewalks, and hours of observing rock faces before he moved a drill head over by an inch.

    He didn¡¯t care. It was worth it just to spit in the face of those uptight Gravitic assholes. All they cares about was following their SOP and maintaining their outdated military traditions. Steven didn¡¯t want to live the rest of his life with a stick up his ass and a spider in his head.

    I AM 5T1LL H3RE, STEV3N.

    Sixteen years, and all Steven had been able to do was stop that damn implant controlling his nervous system. Doing so had caused an annoying glitch with its text output, but Steven couldn¡¯t bring himself to care enough in order to fix it. He was hopeful that he would be able to adapt his version of tungstanium into a tool that could crush the spider without killing him; he had taken the time to figure out exactly where it sat, after all.

    JUST L3T ME HELP Y0U STEV3N. I C4N SP33D TH1S ALONG FOR TH3 BOTH 0F U5.

    Again, Steven declined to respond. He knew better than to rise to the bait.

    Just he was about to begin preparations to do another mining run, Steven heard a ping, and a red light began to strobe next to his externally connected system. He kept it air-gapped, of course, both to protect his systems from having any information skimmed from them, and also from himself just in case this damnable spider figured out how to circumvent the overrides Steven had put in place and the limited damage he had managed to inflict on the spider, and send a message to Gravitic Solutions giving them information like his suppliers or, even worse, his location.

    Steven approached the monitor as he donned a glove he had designed to remove any skin contact to the monitor, just to put an additional barrier between a connection and the spider. Most would call him overly cautious, even paranoid. Steven would call those people gullible fools on a good day.

    The monitor had an alert for an old facility which Steven had abandoned roughly a year and a half ago, which meant they were still an entire hiding spot behind. Looking at the list of what he had left behind, Steven was disappointed in himself. The lackluster defenses he¡¯d abandoned were paltry compared to his previous place. The last raid one of his old facilities had gone through hadn¡¯t killed anyone important sadly, just their pilot when some orbiting debris had struck their ship.

    This ship clearly wasn¡¯t meant for any kind of combat, unfortunately. It had jumped into the system, then burned to a Lagrange point where it began active scanning. It was the active scanning the Steven¡¯s instrumentation had picked up. Even if it was actually those rat bastards that had been chasing him for years that were operating that scanning craft, they kept tabs on explorers. As soon as whoever was in there reported to their bosses, Gravitic would know, and they would task their people to go in the hopes of catching him, or at least figuring out where he had gone.

    Steven prided himself on leaving the barest hints behind, enough that their idiot employees could figure out the puzzle, but not enough to actually get to him before he moved on to a new location. As soon as they figured out where his clue were pointing in a reasonable time frame, he¡¯d stop, but in the meantime it was a fun little puzzle for him to make. After all, if people are going to cal you a villain, might as well lean into the tropes; it made them underestimate him.

    He set an alarm for when a craft entered or went inside of a geostationary orbit at the vacated lab. He always enjoyed watching pirates get themselves killed in his traps, no matter if they were free-range or corporate.

    He whistled to himself as he sealed his helmet on and climbed into one of his mining vessels. Might as well make the most of his time here, before he had to find greener pastures.

 CHAPTER 7

    ¡°So, what you¡¯re saying is that CQC isn¡¯t a problem for me?¡±

    CORRECT. THE EFFECT DOESN¡¯T LAST FOREVER THOUGH. IT IS AN ESCAPE TOOL, NOT A FREE TICKET TO BRAWL YOUR WAY THROUGH EVERY FIGHT.

    ¡°Still, good to know. I¡¯ll have to remember all of that.¡±

    The glow surrounding my hands faded, and I stepped out of the tram. The Dockmaster was waiting for me on the platform.

    ¡°TUGGER!¡± He had to yell over the noise in the hanger, and I could still barely hear him. ¡°ITS TOO LOUD TO TALK OUT HERE, COME TO MY OFFICE!¡± I followed him wordlessly, stopping to make way for the crew on shift. This was the busy time for them. Not only did they need to take care of the mining ships that were crawling back in from all over the system with months of accumulated damage that needed to be repaired than put to bed for the station jump, but they needed to pull in docking linkages and seal the linkage ports. Nearly a hundred thousand man hours to get everything ready for the jump, and it usually happened every two months or so. With two weeks to get everything settled, it all flowed well usually. It wouldn¡¯t be my problem, this time. I hoped I wasn¡¯t fucking the station over too much.

    I followed the Dockmaster to his office, relaxing slightly as the door sealed and cut off the din of the thrusters, power equipment and profuse swearing echoing through the main hangar. ¡°Much better.¡± the Dockmaster said emphatically. He sighed. ¡°I gotta say Tugger, you¡¯re fucking the station over.¡± Whoops.

    ¡°I¡¯d apologize, sir, but it¡¯s not my choice. At all. As a matter of fact, I wanted¡± my mouth froze, and I suddenly couldn¡¯t make a sound.

    ADMINISTRATIVE LOCK ENABLED

    TUGGER, IN CASE YOU DID NOT REALIZE EARLIER, ANOTHER OF MY FUNCTIONS IS TO MAINTAIN COMPANY SECRECY. THAT INCLUDES STOPPING YOU FROM DIVULGING SECRETS WITHOUT AUTHORIZATION, AND ALLOWS ME TO ACT IN YOUR PLACE. THIS IS UNCOMFORTABLE FOR BOTH OF US, PLEASE DO NOT MAKE ME DO THIS AGAIN.

    ADMINISTRATIVE LOCK DISABLED

    As I read the message my implant printed on my HUD, I heard and felt myself talk. It was disorienting. ¡°¡­ sorry, I lost my train of thought. I wanted to cut my contract a little early, so I made a bit of a deal. That¡¯s why I sent you that list of refit requests for the Dusty Star.¡± I could tell that the cadence wasn¡¯t quite right, but it was close enough that most people wouldn¡¯t hear anything off.

    ¡°Don¡¯t you fucking sir me Tugger. I might be stuck behind a desk now, but I have more flight hours than you¡¯ve been contracted for.¡±

    ¡°Sorry, sir. I¡¯ll address you correctly, Mister Peter the Dockmaster sir.¡±

    He gave me a mock glare. Peter had been my trainer for piloting tugs, so when I had the chance I liked to give him a hard time.

    ¡°Uh huh. Sure you will. Look kid, this list doesn¡¯t make any sense. I know you want to go explore, and your gear doesn¡¯t match a short term explo boat at all. Do you want to just give me a new list? I¡¯m not approving any of this nonsense you sent me unless we go over each item individually.¡±

    I had no fucking clue what he was talking about, but I had dealt with so much nonsense in the past 5ish hours that I just rolled with it. ¡°Let¡¯s go over the list Pete. Its all there for a reason.¡±

    ¡°Ok. First off is your power plant change, and we can¡¯t talk about that without diving into your new RCS choice. You¡¯ve talked about getting trinary fusion reactors and dual ion-fuel RCS boosters ever since you got it into your head to go swimming. Now you want a TAPEs with magnetohydrodymanic vectored RCS? The TAPEs is fine, it makes sense. But, boyo, you should have ion based RCS if you¡¯re exploring. You can¡¯t afford to run out of thruster fuel, and even if you had the equipment to refuel in a nebula (which isn¡¯t on this list), you can¡¯t be sure you¡¯ll get to one.¡±

    I knew what I needed to say, and with my implant not telling me otherwise I figured I had a decent response. ¡°I don¡¯t just want to do exploration now. Some, sure, but if I get bored I figured I could be a cheap option for a VIP ferry.¡±

    ¡°You buffoon. They¡¯re VIPs, they don¡¯t do cheap. Whatever, I¡¯ll approve it. Cargo ferrying needs quick reaction thrust too, so it¡¯ll work when you need a fallback.¡±

    He tapped at the monitor above his desk.

    ¡°Next is your flight deck modification. There¡¯s nothing wrong with your choice per se, but¡­ it¡¯s just so unnecessary. A full body gel pack, triplicate redundant control wiring, and neural control from anywhere inside of the ship? Just¡­ why? And how? You don¡¯t have any kind of interface installed, last I knew.¡±

    ¡°Well¡­¡± I didn¡¯t have a good answer, and I knew it. ¡°¡­ I make bad choices sometimes? It sounds cool.¡±

    ¡°Really? That¡¯s all you have for me?¡±

    I took a second. ¡°The neural interface is important for ship control. What happens if I¡¯m doing an emergency space walk and I need to do some emergency maneuvers to avoid a chunk of rock? I have an implant lined up as part of the deal I cut, but I can¡¯t talk about the details.¡±

    The Dockmaster shook his head. ¡°Fine. It¡¯s not worth it, but I won¡¯t stop you. Just ask yourself before you go through with the implant if you really want to turn out like 72. I know you never saw eye to eye with him, but he¡¯s gotten worse since his operation.¡±

    Too bad I was never given a choice. I watched him tap at his monitor and waited for the next surprise item on the list I had never sent. Maybe it had been my implant?

    MY NAME IS THERIDION, TUGGER. AND YES, I SENT THIS LIST. WE ARE ON AN EXPEDITED SCHEDULE, AND WE DID NOT HAVE THE TIME TO WASTE. I DID NOT ANTICIPATE THIS DELAY, BUT YOU SEEM TO HAVE IT IN HAND.

    ¡°Wings are an odd choice, but if you want to enter atmo, I won¡¯t stop you. Good to go there. Your food production is fine, it makes sense for exploration. The next issue I have is the sheer tonnage of weaponry you have on this list. No explorer needs these. VIP ferries don¡¯t need all of this. You want a cruiser¡¯s worth of firepower strapped onto a ship the size of a corvette. I don¡¯t want to sign off on all of this, and even if I did, it won¡¯t all fit. You need to resize your frame or stop pretending to be a military vessel.¡±

    ¡°So¡­ I might have forgotten what I put on that list. Can you refresh my memory.¡±

    ¡°Tugger. You¡¯re an idiot. How do you forget all of this? You¡¯re asking for over four hundred laser CIWS scattered around your hull, turreted 100mm cannons bracketing every docking port, replacing your port and starboard docking ports with manned ball turrets with quad 60mm rotary cannons (with remote access, of course), and an additional four 100mm cannons on the port and starboard side of your front view visual suite, you have an underslung forward facing railgun, and fucking missile clamps facing every which way.¡±

    ¡°What can I say?¡± I shrugged. ¡°It¡¯s a dangerous galaxy.¡±

    ¡°Not that dangerous. Besides, your missiles will hit each other, trust me. Separation charges will cook off the other missiles you have strapped to your ship. I¡¯ll approve forward facing launchers on your belly and on your new wings, if you can give me a better answer. Everything else is arguably for pirates, so fine. Why do you need missiles?¡±

    I really had no clue what to say, and Theridion wasn¡¯t me. Fuck it. ¡°I can¡¯t tell you.¡±

    ¡°Why?¡±

    ¡°I can¡¯t tell you that, either. Classification is a bitch.¡±

    ¡°Ah.¡± The Dockmaster nodded. ¡°I was wondering what kind of deal you cut. Good luck, Tugger. I guess that explains your software and comms requests too.¡±

    ¡°Could¡­ could you remind me about those too? Just as a refresher, of course.¡±

    Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

    He tapped his nose. ¡°Of course. You wrote the list, after all, you know what¡¯s on my screen. Let¡¯s see. For comms, you want an unprogrammed eight channel QComm. Odd to get it without a link already in, but you¡¯re resourceful. I¡¯m sure you¡¯ll manage. Speaking of unprogrammed, you also want every single bit of software and firmware taken out of any and every box or chip on Dusty Star. You realize that turns your ship into a massive, expensive brick, right?¡±

    ¡°I do. Here¡¯s hoping I have a solution, eh?¡± I figured I should just lean in to the cockiness that Peter clearly expected from me.

    WE HAVE PROPRIETARY SOFTWARE AND FIRMWARE TUGGER. HAVING PRE-WIPED SYSTEMS SAVES TIME.

    ¡°I¡¯m sure you do. I¡¯m not so sure, boyo, about getting it done. These modifications are expensive. Beyond expensive, really. Do you want a breakdown, or just the whole number?¡±

    ¡°Just give me the number. If you can send me an itemized list, that would be appreciated.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re looking at about 40 million credits for parts, man hours, and labor premiums since we¡¯ve started the moving process. You¡¯ll also need another 7 to 8 million for ammunition for the railgun, missile launchers, and cannons, spare rails for the railgun, and lenses for your CIWS buds.¡±

    I was a little disappointed that it was so close to the amount I had received, but so be it. ¡°Buds?¡±

    ¡°You need to pay more attention to these lists you make, kid. The laser CIWS you chose are implanted into your hull, and vaporize incoming projectiles. Normally, the system¡¯s software is smart enough to analyze and respond to EM attacks with destructive interference, but you want it wiped, so that¡¯s gone. The only part outside the ship is a little dome to protect the focusing apparatus from particle collisions.¡±

    ¡°Neat. So, 48 million. Will you send me a bill, or¡­¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re funny, Tugger. You should know damn well that Rumors doesn¡¯t do anything outside of emergencies without getting paid first.¡±

    ¡°Better to ask, Peter. Where am I transferring to?¡± I tapped at the pad on my pressure suit¡¯s forearm, confidently sitting flush with the armor that had folded around it, setting up a transfer. It was easier with a full sized tablet, but the PED that was practically a standard for pressure suits still got the job done.

    ¡°Dockmaster refit fund. Right¡­¡± The Dockmaster reached over and scrolled through a list of transfer candidates on my PED and pointed out an account name ¡°¡­there. You should expect everything put together, tested, and loaded about a week after we get the station unpacked and operation at the new location. You¡¯ll be on Wanderer 6, correct?¡± I nodded. ¡°We¡¯ll send you a message there, then. I also have to tell you that we can¡¯t do any live-fire tests for your weapons. The CIWS we can test on rocks, but I¡¯m not authorizing someone to shoot at Dusty Star, and no one on this station is going to get the ok to just dump munitions into the void.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s fine. I¡¯ll do tests after I get my software package installed. Transfer iiiiis¡­ done. Did you get it?¡± It may have been rude for me to ask, but 48 million credits was an insane amount of money. I wasn¡¯t going to just assume that it went where I expected it to.

    ¡°I did. I¡¯ve sent you your itemized invoice, just like you asked. You have manuals for weapon operation, but with your own software they might not be accurate, at least for theory of operation.¡±

    ¡°Perfect.¡± A ding echoed from my wrist as the invoice was delivered. I reached across the desk, and the Dockmaster shook my hand. His grip was still firm from his years of piloting and maintenance. ¡°I¡¯m glad I was able to work with you.¡±

    ¡°Now now, boy. This isn¡¯t goodbye. You still need to pick up your baby when it¡¯s finished.¡±

    ¡°Very true, sir. I¡¯ll not be late, sir. Thank you sir.¡±

    I left his office, a grin plastered to my face, as the Dockmaster shouted at my back.

    ¡°HOW MANY FUCKING TIMES TUGGER! DON¡¯T YOU DARE FUCKING SIR ME! I STILL WORK FOR A LIVING!¡±

    ¡ª-¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª

    The tram had been instructed to wait for me, I was surprised to learn.

    OF COURSE, TUGGER. THE WANDERER 6 HAS A MISSION TO CONDUCT. I PREDICT THAT YOU WILL REFUSE ANY TRAINING COURSES DURING THIS TRAM RIDE IN LIEU OF LINGERING OVER THE CHANGES YOU HAVE ORDERED FOR YOUR OWN CRAFT. THIS WILL MEAN YOU HAVE TO PRACTICE LIVE IN PILOTING WANDERER 6 OUT OF THE STATION. WE WILL STILL HAVE TIME FOR YOUR OTHER TRAINING MODULES PRIOR TO THE HARROWING PART OF THE MISSION.

    It stung a little that I was that predictable, but of course I wanted to look at this invoice. 40 million in parts and labor was expensive. There weren¡¯t any surprises on the invoice, since Peter had been kind enough to go over every modification with me, but he had gone the extra step to add a small block of text to each line item, highlighting important capabilities that came with each weapon system. I wasn¡¯t going to take the time to check, but I was willing to bet he had lifted the text straight from the marketing materials. I was shocked when I read the first entry, and it just kept getting worse.

    <blockquote>

    Power plant : Thermo-Acoustic Powerplant - Electrical/Hydraulic PEKS-PMHDA x2

    The Thermo-Acoustic Powerplant - Electrical/Hydraulic, or TAPE, is a long standing workhorse in the spacefaring powerplant world. The TAPEs provides electrical and optional hydraulic power to every size of aircraft and spacecraft, and does so at a noise level far belong more damaging options like traditional rockets or turbines.

    Unlike standard TAPEs, which require an outside unit to provide shielding for the heat providing fusion reactor, the PiezoElectric KickStart line is a self-contained unit that is able to start with just the press of a button, using a fission reactor and piezoelectrical generation to initiate and maintain fusion shielding until the fusion reaction is self-sustaining. The fission reactor is normally disabled for safety, ensuring customers avoid nuclear incidents.

    The TAPE PEKS-PMHDA allows the operator to divert heat from the acoustic generator to superheat RCS reaction material, allowing for magnetic thrust vectoring (MTV capable equipment sold separately).

    RCS : MHDATV x44

    RCS boosting is done, generally speaking, by ejecting mass out of a nozzle to control ship direction and spin. Accurate RCS usage requires ultra-precise burns from multiple nozzles, gimbaled nozzles, thrust vectoring, or even a combination of all three.

    Magnetohydrodynamic actuation uses a reaction mass that can be influenced magnetically, allowing for thrust vectoring without expensive or difficult to repair components.

    Aerodynamic Control Surfaces

    These wings possess ailerons, slats, spoilers, flaps, blanks for RCS booster mounts, hard points for external fuel tank mounting, and hard points for mission specific load outs, such as missile launchers, bomb racks, and EWAR equipment for ECM, ECCM, and ELINT. These wings also contain self-sealing internal bladders for fuel or reaction mass, allowing longer mission effectiveness while maintaining combat integrity and reducing maintenance hours.

    Cockpit : Body Sleeve, Remote Neural

    Featuring a crash-proof black box that seals around the pilot when a potential collision is detected, and a secondary black box for the ship, body sleeve control schemes are the ultimate in safety. With a constantly self-molding gel layer, the pilot is safe from everything short of a collision with a star.

    Movement in this gel-filled box is not a possibility, of course. The control layout for this cockpit model is entirely neural. When properly configured, the wireless access afforded to the pilot means constant pilot responsiveness, even during spacewalks or bio-breaks.

    Aeroponics

    This self contained aeroponics system was produced by Gravitic Solutions with a single goal - sustainability. Using Gravitic Solutions¡¯ revolutionary new gravity production technology, nutrient laden water is misted and dispersed as necessary to ensure maximized plant growth and reduce mechanical complexity. The system can also accept organic waste matter to use in the creation of fertilizer.

    Laser CIWS x450

    Each CIWS is its own, self-contained defense system, utilizing UAIFF recognition software to find, target, and vaporize enemy munitions prior to contact with friendly forces. With a suite of up to 100 trickle charge capacitors supplemented by a direct tie-in to ship power, each CIWS is able to produce up to 150 full powered shots from the broad spectrum 600kw laser. Continual firing can be accomplished with ship power at reduced effectiveness.

    CIWS are able to be tied in to the ship combat systems, allowing for faster target acquisition, tracking, and removal, and more efficient weapon application.

    While most EM based weaponry does not have a consumable element, the Laser CIWS is designed for constant, consistent use in a target rich environment. In order to ensure the circuitry and mechanical portions of the Laser CIWS remains functional for as long as possible, otherwise damaging heat is routed into heat sinks built into the focusing arrays. These focusing arrays are designed to be replaceable, ejecting into a container or into space when thermal loads become detrimental to weapon function. Additional focusing units may be loaded into the Laser CIWS for automatic installation during periods of peak usage.

    100mm Cannons - Turreted x12

    These cannons fire 100mm shells at a solid rate of 30 rpm, and can fire shells containing payloads for broad mission effectiveness. Shells are fed into the weapon from a fixed carriage line internal to the craft, and spent casings are ejected to the ships exterior. Cartridge ejection is done for heat management purposes.

    Due to the turret mounting, these cannons have an additional 5 degrees of visibility when unobstructed, allowing for simultaneous firing solutions on a single target from multiple 100mm cannons.

    Manual Guidance Ball Turret : Quad 60mm Rotary Cannon x2

    Sensors and automation go a long on the modern battlefield, but sometimes, you need to squeeze a trigger yourself and lay down a line of hate and righteous fury. Internally mounted weaponry, while useful, takes up valuable airframe space and has, at best, a narrow field of fire.

    Enter the ball turret. No longer do you need to risk your own life just to take one; the ball turret is a hermetically sealed environment that protects the user and can even act as a survival pod in case the craft it was attached to didn¡¯t have enough ball turrets to keep it alive.

    A state of the art gyroscopic control seat keep the operator in line with the mounted weapons at all times, while hardened carriage gantries both position the mounted weapon in-line with the operator and provide consistent munitions feeding to the mounted weapon.

    The 60mm Rotary Cannon, produced by Admiral Electronics, delivers hundreds of pounds of munitions to its target every second. An eight barrel design, this air-cooled cannon was not originally meant for exoatmospheric use, but it able to operate in space without additional cooling measures thanks to the proprietary metal used in the manufacture of the 60mm shells. With a maximum speed of 3,000 rounds per minute per gun, or 12,000 rpm with a four weapon set-up, the operator is well equipped to eliminate most targets and severely damage any target with extreme prejudice.

    Gravimetric Railgun

    The railgun has been standard fare for weaponry as soon as armed conflict made its way out of atmosphere. Even today, most railguns are expensive and difficult to operate and maintain due to high heat generation relative to other weapons, and rail degradation. This is not most railguns.

    The newest hardware from Gravitic Arms, this weapon utilizes gravitoelectricalmagnetic propulsion rather than electromagnetic propulsion to accelerate rounds. Not only does the addition of induced gravity relieve heat production and physical stress in the rails, acceleration is increased multiplicatively with the introduction of induced gravity. The theoretical limitation of muzzle velocity with this weapon is .7c. At .5c, this weapon is able to fire continuously at 30 rpm without noticeable speed or accuracy degradation until 10,000 rounds or even beyond, depending on duty cycle.

    Missile Clamp : Variable Size x14

    This standard missile clamp has variable geometry arms that lock into place around any size munition, allowing for quick turn-around mission reconfiguration without wasting time replacing or daisy chaining pylons.

    The clamp is also designed with spaces for squibs to be inserted to act as separation charges during zero-g munition launches with low or even no craft acceleration available.

    QCOMM : 8 Channel, Packeted

    Quantum Communication has become the galactic standard for instant data transfer. Due to the low chance of data loss and to increase computer speeds, most quantum communication makes use of data streams. Higher quality QComms and heavy duty QComms, especially military units, still utilize encrypted packet transfer protocols to minimize information loss and possible data breeches.

    With 8 channels, this QComm is equipped to contact 8 different data hubs at a time, an expensive proposition for all but the largest organizations.

    RegCOMM Package : Full EM, Military Spec x1

    This communications suite is the real deal. Able to transmit and receive across the EM spectrum, RegCOMM customers never need to be concerned with losing a connection or dropping packets.

    The mil-spec variation allows for our customers to conduct broad-spectrum receiving missions without having to broadcast responses to solidify encryption handshakes while enjoying Rx/Tx capabilities hardened against both digital and physical attacks. We label this as mil-spec and not military grade, because we and our customers both know that ¡®military grade¡¯ is a nice way of saying ¡®absolute dog piss¡¯. We are proud to say that no military in the galaxy has taken to widespread adoption of our product. Quality has its price.

    Frame Extension

    </blockquote>

    ¡°I¡¯ll be honest, Theridion, this is not what I had planned for my refit.¡±

    I AM AWARE, TUGGER. YOU STILL LIKE THE CHANGES, THOUGH.

    ¡°Yeah, I do. At the very least I won¡¯t be a soft target for pirates now.¡±

    WHEN YOU GET TIRED OF EXPLORING, I HAVE ALREADY FILED FOR AND RECEIVED CLEARANCE FROM RMC AUTHORIZING YOU TO GO PIRATE HUNTING.

    ¡°One thing at a time.¡±

    I stood up as the tram arrived to the hangar with the sleek, black ship I still didn¡¯t know how to fly.

    ¡°Ok. Let¡¯s start the training modules. BFM first, I¡¯d think.¡±

 CHAPTER 8

    I reclined in the cockpit of Wanderer 6, listening to the avionics hidden behind panels underneath me begin to whir. My HUD was highlighting buttons for me to press in order to power on the ship and do pre-flight system checks. Theridion had guided me up here, informing me that the other three had already conducted a pre-op walk around, and didn¡¯t have the time for me to stumble through everything.

    As the screens around me flickered on and began their warm-up cycle, I put my feet into the stirrups at the base of the chair and buckled the five point harness over my chest. To my right was an armature extending from the wall under the triangular viewports, holding a joystick that handled flight controls. Unlike my tug, it was the only flight control interface, allowing for me to control all six degrees of motion with a twist of my wrist. It was also absolutely covered in buttons. To my left was an array of four touch screens and physical switches, which were fixed in place. The screens were set into the left sidewall and sat angled so they faced the pilot, while the switch panel sat on a ledge next to the armrest. In front of me, four additional screens extended on more armatures and looked to normally sit just below the viewport.

    WELL DONE TUGGER. YOU CAN PRESS BUTTONS. I¡¯LL START THE SIMULATION NOW. NO NEED TO PANIC.

    ¡°Well now I want to panic. Why would I¡­¡± My vision felt like it shut off; there was no fading, everything just went black.

    INITIALIZING BFM TRAINING SESSION 1, TRAINER VERSION 2.3.6-WNDR scrolled across what I now realized was an empty VR environment, and then a wireframe version of the cockpit I was currently sitting in formed around me, materials slowly appearing to fill in the framework.

    WELCOME TO TRAINING TUGGER. AS THIS IS THE FIRST TIME YOU¡¯VE BEEN IN THIS PARTICULAR ENVIRONMENT, I WILL EXPLAIN HOW IT FUNCTIONS. OTHERS HAVE NOT DONE SO, AND IT RESULTS IN LONGER TRAINING TIMES WITHOUT FAIL.

    THE VIRTUAL AREA YOU SEE AROUND YOU IS QUITE LITERALLY IN YOUR HEAD. I AM ABLE TO CREATE TRAINING SCHEMA, BUT POWERING THE VIRTUAL EXPERIENCE IS BEYOND MY HARDWARE CAPABILITIES. USING YOUR BRAIN FOR PROCESSING POWER ALLOWS YOU TO USE THE TRAININGS I GENERATE. THIS HAS THE ADDED BENEFIT OF GENERAL PARALYSIS OF YOUR PHYSICAL PERSON. I WOULD NOT RECOMMEND THIS KIND OF TRAINING IN A HOSTILE ENVIRONMENT, BUT IT IS PERFECT FOR A WIDE VARIETY OF TASKS, FROM TEACHING DELICATE MANEUVERING WITH LARGE VEHICLES TO LIVE WEAPONS FIRE WITHOUT ANY OF THE INHERENT RISK OR COST.

    ¡°Ok. So I can¡¯t get hurt or damage anything during these training sessions?¡±

    CORRECT.

    ¡°Let¡¯s see what I can figure out then.¡±

    I crashed. A lot. I had thought myself a good pilot, but apparently I was just used to the Dusty Star.

    Getting the ship started was easy. The cockpit layout was the same as the physical ship, so I already knew how to turn power on; press the BATT PWR switch, wait for the LED under the switch to turn green, then press MAIN PWR to enable power to critical systems like the reactor. The reactor control was automatic, and once it was spun up, electrical and hydraulic power was available for all systems, and was controlled through the screens to my left.

    Thrusters were a little more complex. Unlike the Dusty Star, I didn¡¯t have individual control over each RCS thruster and CMGs. Instead, Wanderer-6 was clearly meant to be piloted with some kind of AI assistance. Theridion stepped in to fill the role after letting me struggle to do more than lifting off for 15 minutes, and I suspected that this ship was designed to only be flown by those with the spider augments.

    TUGGER, TIME IS NOT STOPPED WHILE YOU ARE TRAINING THIS WAY. JUST BECOME PROFICIENT IN GETTING OUT OF A HANGAR, AND WE CAN DO THE REST ON OUR WAY THERE.

    30 minutes, seven ships, eight hangars, and one incidental missile later, Theridion declared me as ¡®sufficiently capable at avoiding stationary objects¡¯ and ended the simulation.

    The wireframe around me vanished, and blackness rushed away from my vision like exiting a tunnel. The cockpit screens all had completed their warmups and were displaying ship system info in what I assumed to be the default display.

    I pushed a few buttons until the selection window for screen 3 showed COMMS. Another button changed the appropriate screen, and I was greeted with a comprehensive overview of the information the ship was receiving and sending. Tapping the TUNING label showed a list of active frequencies, automatically assigned a label and then colored based on the EM spectrum setting each frequency was on. Given that I was in a ship sitting inside of the station, only the lower energy channels, like light or radio, were available with the other options being shut off by the comms system as a safety measure.

    Below the list of active frequencies, a grayed out number pad was shown next to a spectrum selection dropdown, along with two digital switch¡¯s labeled Rx and Tx respectively. Theridion informed me that the number pad would be freed up when a spectrum section was chosen. Good to know, I guess, but I didn¡¯t care currently. I tapped the active radio frequency for local station control.

    ¡­PY THAT CONTROL. STANDING BY FOR TUG CONTACT.

    I waited to make sure the frequency was quiet, and pressed a button on the joystick that was labeled with TX.

    ¡°Station Control, SPS Designation Two Five Bravo Tac Mike Kilo November Tac Golf Victor Sierra Tac Bravo Lima Juliet, callsign Wanderer 6 online. Requesting undock clearance and vector to jump clearance space.¡±

    WANDERER 6, STATION CONTROL. BE ADVISED. THIS STATION WILL BE RELOCATING IMMINENTLY. YOU WILL NOT BE ALLOWED TO REDOCK IN THIS SYSTEM.

    TUGGER, TELL CONTROL WE HAVE A PRIORITY CODE BURNELL AND REQUIRE IMMEDIATE RELEASE.

    ¡°Station Control, Wanderer 6 acknowledges redock limitation. Requesting immediate undock and jump space vectors, priority code Bravo Uniform Romeo November Echo Lima Lima.¡±

    WANDERER 6, STATION CONTROL. PRIORITY BURNELL ACKNOWLEDGED. UNDOCK AND BURN TO JUMP SPACE AS NEEDED. CONTACT SYSTEM CONTROL FOR LEAST TIME ROUTING. GOOD DAY.

    This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

    ¡°Station Control, Wanderer 6. Least time burn understood. Contacting System Control, good day.¡±

    I tapped the comms screen, still displaying active frequencies, and switched to System Control. After just hearing dead vacuum for a few seconds, I held the TX button.

    ¡°System Control, SPS Designation Two Five Bravo Tac Mike Kilo November Tac Golf Victor Sierra Tac Bravo Lima Juliet, callsign Wanderer 6, undock imminent. Requesting least-time burn vectors to jump space, priority Bravo Uniform Romeo November Echo Lima Lima.¡±

    WANDERER 6, SYSTEM CONTROL. PRIORITY ACKNOWLEDGED, CALCULATING LEAST TIME VECTORS. STAND BY.

    ¡°Control, Wanderer 6. Standing by.¡±

    With that, I lifted off of the hangar floor and rotated the ship. While I had been training, the hangar had been put under vacuum and the door had been opened, so all it took was a few very judicious applications of thrust to edge out into the void. As soon as Wanderer 6 had cleared the hangar, the doors started to close. They really were in a hurry to change systems.

    WANDERER 6, SYSTEM CONTROL. LEAST TIME BURN VECTORS TRANSMITTING TO SPS. YOU ARE CLEAR TO DEPART UPON VECTOR RECEPTION, GOOD DAY.

    ¡°System Control, Wanderer 6. Clear to depart on vector acceptance, copy. Good day.¡±

    I looked over at the screen control.

    ¡°Suggestions, Theridion?¡±

    I WOULD HAVE YOU SELECT THE NAVIGATION SCREEN ON ONE OF THE REMAINING THREE TO YOUR LEFT, WHICH WILL LET YOU PUT RECEIVED VECTORS ONTO THE SCREENS IN FRONT OF YOU.

    I did it. The screen manipulation was intuitive, but I hadn¡¯t played with it at all during my flight training, so I was more than happy to listen to advice on using them. I also took the liberty of setting up one of the front screens, which I realized was screen 7, to display a 3-D radar scan. The ship was smart enough that even at 1 AU of displayed distance, the display would create pop-ups that showed possible collision dangers. I suspected it would also show incoming missiles, but Theridion didn¡¯t know and frankly I didn¡¯t want to try to test it.

    Another of the screens in from of me held SPS information by default, and the screen began flashing as the vectors finally came in. Following Theridion¡¯s instructions, I put those vectors into the autopilot and was pushed back in my seat as the ship accelerated hard.

    TUGGER, NOW THAT WE ARE UNDER WAY, WE HAVE TIME FOR MORE TRAINING MODULES. I HAVE A LIST FOR YOU TO RUN THROUGH THAT MAY BE NECESSARY FOR THIS MISSION. I WOULD SUGGEST MUNITIONS USAGE FIRST, THEN ATMOSPHERIC EVASIVES, AND FINISHING WITH SUB-ORBITAL PERSONNEL INSERTIONS.

    ¡°Ok. Let¡¯s do munitions first.¡±

    INITIATING TRAINING

    The wireframe built itself over the cockpit around me.

    FIRST, TUGGER, FLIP THE COVER OVER THE SWITCH LABELED WPN LCK/NLCK. POSITIONING THE SWITCH TO NLCK ALLOWS THE OFFENSIVE WEAPONS SYSTEMS TO OPERATE. THIS CRAFT HAS THE SAME LASER CIWS AS DUSTY STAR IS SUPPOSED TO RECEIVE, AND THEY ARE NOT TIED TO THIS SWITCH. IF YOU RUN THROUGH THE SCREEN SELECTION OPTIONS, YOU WILL SEE AN OPTION LABELED AS WPNS. THIS WILL BRING UP A WEAPON CONTROL SCREEN. THIS SCREEN WILL ALSO BE DISPLAYED AUTOMATICALLY IN SCREEN 8 IF ANY WEAPON SYSTEM ON THIS CRAFT IS ENGAGED OR IF HOSTILE CONTACTS ARE FOUND.

    Learning and using the weapons systems built into Wanderer 6 was much easier than I expected. Missiles utilized ship-board guidance and on-board guidance, allowing for high target confidence, while turrets could use ship-board guidance for autonomous fire or be slaved to eye tracking that activated with my helmet. My helmet tied into the weapon system for than anything else when it came to piloting the craft, as it gave me a view of space through the ship, allowing me to keep an eye on targets. It also augmented my HUD, outlining solid bodies in space that could be collision hazards, allied, neutral, and hostile craft, and inbound munitions that could pose a danger.

    The real difficulty was doing all of this and flying. Making sure I was tracking targets with turreted weapons, keeping a lock other other targets for missiles, avoiding collisions with debris, rocks, and other ships, and positioning the ship to provide optimal angles for my turrets and CIWS was so far beyond my capabilities due to the sheer amount of data I needed to process at any given time. The best I had been able to do, after about thirty other scenarios, was kill two hostile targets through a thin planetary ring, and that was only because the CIWS had vaporized the ice in the ring and overshot, killing one of the targets on accident; an overzealous application of every missile I could launch popped the other craft.

    THAT IS ENOUGH TUGGER. IF IT COMES TO IT, I WILL FLY AND YOU CAN PLAY TURRET JOCKEY. YOU HAVE SPENT TOO MUCH TIME, WE ARE HALF WAY TO THE JUMP POINT, AND WE WILL BE OUT OF TIME THEN. I WILL BEGIN THE NEXT MODULE.

    INITIATING TRAINING

    YOUR GOAL, TUGGER, IS TO AVOID GETTING HIT BY ANY OF THE INCOMING FIRE. THIS IS IN ATMOSPHERE, SO EM BASED WEAPONRY WILL NOT BE AS SIGNIFICANT OF A THREAT AS IT NORMALLY WOULD BE, BUT YOUR CIWS WILL ALSO NOT FUNCTION AS WELL AS YOU WOULD LIKE. I¡¯D SUGGEST MINIMIZING YOUR CHAFF AND FLARE USAGE IN FAVOR OF BLANKET FIRE WITH YOUR HIGH FIRE RATE TURRETS. GOOD LUCK. MAKE IT QUICK.

    And with that heartening speech, the viewport in front of me abruptly switched from the star studded blackness of space to blue atmosphere. The ship around me began to vibrate, as the lower RCS thrusters engaged to fight gravity and help the main engines as we increased airspeed to generate lift. In front of me, I began to see small puffs of smoke. It took a second for me to realize it was flak, but as soon as I saw, I dove. Flak, from what I understood, required ranging shots, and I guessed that varying my altitude would help protect me by keeping those ranging shots from being accurate enough to cause damage. Just as I was pulling out of the dive into a shallow climb, a steady beep started resounding through the cockpit.

    ¡°What the fuck?¡± I had no idea what the issue was, and the only difference I could see on the screens was a small box in the Navigation screen that read SAM. The steady beep doubled in speed, and a voice I hadn¡¯t heard before started saying WOODPECKER, WOODPECKER, WOODPECKER, WOODPECKER. The voice cut out at the same time as the SAM box turned off. I also noticed that a section of the Navigation screen showed a red flashing X labeled HSAM1 for a few seconds before it cleared. I was still climbing hard when the beeping, which had only slowed down, ramped up again. Looking at the screen that had had the red X, now I saw seven purple triangles, each labeled HSAM2 through HSAM 8. ¡°Theridion, what the fuck is happening?¡±

    TUGGER, HEAVY SAM SITE CAPTURED. HOSTILE ORDINANCE CLOSING. CIWS OVERHEATED, TWO MIKES TO HEATSINK REPLACEMENT.

    In a panic, I looked around frantically. The Navigation screen, in addition to the incoming missiles, showed a cluster of contacts that were slowly moving further from the center of the display.

    PRESS THE HIGHLIGHTED BUTTONS ON YOUR JOYSTICK TUGGER.

    Theridion had lit up two different switches on the joystick. One was a trigger, which I had to hold, while the other was a directional pad that allowed me to choose active targets from among my radar contacts, and the weapon to employ for that target. I selected the SAM in the middle of the group, totaling almost 25 launchers. At Theridion¡¯s suggestion, I dropped something labeled as ¡°ABPC¡±. The loss of weight let the ship gain just enough speed to let me see the SAM site vanish in a cloud of fire and debris, before the simulation ended with a flash.

    YOU DIED, TUGGER. YOU GOT HIT.

    ¡°Ok, great. What should I have done differently?¡±

    YOU ONLY USED YOUR CIWS TO DEFEAT INCOMING MISSILES. YOU COULD HAVE USED YOUR GUNS TO KILL THEM. YOU ALSO DID NOT KNOW HOW TO READ YOUR INSTRUMENTATION. NOT YOUR FAULT, BUT YOU NEED TO BE ABLE TO ADAPT. YOUR FLYING INSTINCTS WERE ACCEPTABLE, THANKFULLY. I HAVE A NEARLY INFINITE VARIATIONS OF EVASIVE TRAINING SCENARIOS. LET US CONTINUE.

    I died. A lot. Theridion had me run the first scenario another thirteen times before I was able to not only survive, but not get hit by flak (which happened nine times) or by a missile or the shrapnel made from killing a missile before it made contact. I found out that the munition I was dropping was an Air Burst Penetrating Cluster Bomb that worked by popping a few hundred feet above the target, and lighting off rockets with a sharpened DU penetrator for a tip. They were perfect for SAMs, I was informed, because the rockets still being lit tended to cook off unlaunched missiles and kill not just the target but everything around it.

    I managed to survive by eventually getting good enough at flying Wanderer 6, with Theridion reading my mind to fire RCS boosters, that I was able to dodge the SAMs that made it off the ground, past my guns and CIWS, and didn¡¯t go for my chaff and flares. It was stressful, so Theridion put me into the next simulation by having me fly to the next part instead of being dropped in. My Comms screen flashed a contact in blue; a friendly ship.

    WANDERER 6, ORBITING STATION. YOU ARE ENTERING CONTROLLED AIRSPACE. DIVERT TO ANGEL 55 AND REVERSE HEADING IMMEDIATELY.

    Theridion was helpful enough this time to just print out a script for me in my HUD.

    ¡°Orbiting Station, Wanderer 6. Unable to comply, executing Golf Sierra mission Juliet Tango Zulu Tango November. Playtime limited.¡±

    WANDERER 6, LIMITED PLAYTIME UNDERSTOOD. DIVERT IMMEDIATELY AND STANDBY FOR FURTHER INSTRUCTION.

    ¡°Negative, Orbital. Sqauwking local Golf Sierra authorization, you will assist as requested.¡±

    WANDERER 6, ORBITING STATION. SQUAWK RECEIVED, STANDING BY.

    With that exchange finished, I kept an eye out for any new radar contacts. Nothing.

    ¡°Theridion, is it normal for this group to have a station in orbit?

    YES AND NO. SOMETIMES THEY HAVE MISSIONS IN LOCATIONS WHERE OTHER OPERATIONS ARE BEING CONDUCTED. MORE OFTEN, THEY ARE ON THEIR OWN. YOU SHOULD EXPECT TO BE THE NORMAL ¡®ORBITAL SUPPORT¡¯.

    A pit formed in my stomach.

    ¡°How often does your UAIFF show neutrals as friendly?¡±

    FOR THE MISSIONS WE SHOULD EXPECT? ABOUT HALF OF THE TIME.

    The sky split.

 CHAPTER 9

    The air in front of the ship warped as the ship shook like a leaf caught in a tornado. The cockpit resounded with alarms about turbulence, wind shear, and pressurization differentials, while the RWR system on the Navigation screen flashed red without showing any kind of new contact.

    ¡°Theridion, what the fuck!¡± I shouted. I had no idea what was happening. Nothing was locked on to me that I could see, and my own radar didn¡¯t have any targets.

    UNKNOWN. ATMOSPHERIC DISTURBANCE MATCHES PATTERN FOR HYPERSONIC KINETIC MUNITIONS. FIRE LOCATION UNCERTAIN.

    ¡°Shit.¡± I entered a steep dive, corkscrewing erratically in the hopes to avoid whatever and whoever was shooting at me. I recognized that this was how attacks would be in the real world, but I was less than pleased with Theridion for just springing a fresh scenario on me. The warp and weft of the world were pulled apart as another projectile ripped through the atmosphere I was fighting against.

    KINETIC ATTACK APPEARS TO BE REACHING SIGNIFICANT FRACTION OF C. ATTACKS ORIGINATE FROM EXO-ATMOSPHERIC SOURCE. SUSPECT BLUE ON BLUE, POSSIBLE KEY LEAKAGE. FOLLOW COMMS PROMPT, MAINTAIN LOW FLIGHT. DO NOT BREAK CHERUB FIVE.

    I was too overwhelmed to question it, so I went into a near vertical dive and started to read my lines on frequency.

    ¡°Blue On Blue, Blue On Blue. Orbital, Knock It Off. I say again, Blue On Blue Orbital, Knock It Off.¡±

    FUCK YOU, LAPDOG. I HOPE THIS HURTS.

    I felt my bones vaporize as the simulation told me I had just taken a Rod From God at .01c, just before everything suddenly turned white.

    Just as suddenly, I was in calm, level flight again. ¡°Hey, fuckwad. I thought I couldn¡¯t get hurt in these? That fucking hurt.¡±

    I DO NOT UNDERSTAND, TUGGER. YOU ARE NEITHER HURT NOR INJURED, JUST AS I SAID WHEN I EXPLAINED HOW THESE TRAINING MODULES WORK. PLEASE, ELABORATE.

    ¡°NOT HURT! You¡­ you know that we both just took a telephone pole of tungsten to the face that was going at least a hundredth of the universes speed limit, right? That qualifies for hurt in my book.¡±

    I SEE. WE ARE OPERATING OFF OF DIFFERENT PRESUMPTIONS. WHEN I SAY SOMETHING WILL NOT HURT YOU, I MEAN PHYSICAL HARM. THIS TRAINING HAS BEEN SHOWN TO BE FAR LESS EFFECTIVE, EVEN DETRIMENTAL IN SOME SCENARIOS, WHEN YOU ARE NOT GIVEN A COMMENSURATE PHYSICAL RESPONSE TO YOUR ACTIONS. BECAUSE YOU ALLOWED YOURSELF TO BE TARGETED AND ULTIMATELY HIT BY THAT ORBITAL STATION, ALLOWING YOU THE STIMULI PROVIDED BY THE STATIONS WEAPONS MAKES FOR AN EFFECTIVE TEACHING TOOL. I WOULD AVOID GETTING TOO DISTRACTED DURING CALM FLIGHTS IN THE FUTURE. MISSIONS WITH THIS TEAM WILL PROVE FRENETIC.

    ¡°So what should I have done then?¡±

    FIRST? WHENEVER YOU CALL A BLUE ON BLUE TO SOMEONE YOU ARE NOT 100% CERTAIN IS ACTUALLY FRIENDLY, LIGHT THEM UP WITH RADAR. IF YOU HAVE THEM TARGETED, THEY MAY CHOOSE TO DISENGAGE, GIVEN THAT YOU ARE NO LONGER AN UNAWARE TARGET. YOU SHOULD ALSO HAVE VISUALLY SURVEYED THE GROUND IN ORDER TO LOCATE ANY OBVIOUS WEAPON EMPLACEMENTS. ANYTHING MOVING THAT FAST IS EITHER COMING FROM A MASSIVE GROUND FACILITY OR IS EXO-ATMOSPHERIC, SO YOU COULD HAVE DEDUCED WHERE THE DANGER WAS COMING FROM WITH THE FIRST CONTACT BASED OFF OF THE ANGLE OF THE SHOCKWAVES CREATED BY THE ATTACK. MORE REALISTICALLY, DEINOPIDAE WOULD HAVE ATTEMPTED A CURRENT PASS PHRASE EXCHANGE WITH THEM AND DIVERTED YOU TO KILL THEM WHEN THEY INEVITABLY FAIL. RADIO KEYS ARE FAR EASIER TO SPOOF THAN QCOMM CHANNEL INFO.

    ¡°So¡­ for my first time, there was nothing I could do?¡±

    NOT REALLY, NO. IT IS QUITE ALRIGHT, TUGGER. I HAVE RECEIVED THE TACTICAL PACKET FROM DEINOPIDAE ALREADY. IF THERE IS A CHANCE OF SIGNIFICANT ANTI-AIR FIRE ON THIS MISSION, THE TEAM HAVE BEEN PRACTICING EXO-ATMOSPHERIC INSERTIONS. YOU ARE TOO QUICK OF A LEARNER FOR THEM TO WANT TO SACRIFICE THIS EARLY.

    ¡°Comforting. Let¡¯s run it again, I guess.¡±

    A massive sound was accompanied by the ship violently corkscrewing through the air. A diagnostic window popped on to one of the forward screens; it showed my right wing was missing, taken off almost at the wing root.

    IT STARTED AUTOMATICALLY AFTER YOU FAILED THE LAST ONE. I GAVE YOU ALL THE INFORMATION YOU NEEDED TO NOT FAIL. YOU LEFT YOUR UAIFF SQUAWKING, SO THE ENEMY WAS ABLE TO FIND AND TRACK YOU. ANY TRAVEL TO OR FROM A MISSION SHOULD BE DONE WITH LIGHTS AND TRANSPONDERS OFF.

    ¡°Fuck you. Start it again.¡±

    The world flashed white as I was suddenly in level flight again. I turned my IFF squawk off, dropped altitude until I was just a few hundred feet above the structures that served as trees on this planet, and increased my speed. I only stopped accelerating once I got a BAYS LOCKED warning.

    ¡°Theridion?¡±

    MOVING TOO FAST IN ATMOSPHERE POSES A RISK TO THE SHIP IF SOMETHING WERE TO SUDDENLY PROTRUDE. ABOVE MACH 2.5, WANDERER 6 DISABLES WEAPON BAY DOORS TO REMOVE THE RISK OF CATASTROPHIC DAMAGE. THE AFT FACE BOMB BAY AND MISSILE TUBES ARE STILL FUNCTIONING.

    No matter what scenario Theridion had cooked up for me, I didn¡¯t care to lose access to whatever weaponry I had access to. I dropped speed in tiny increments, stopping as soon as the warning vanished. Speed, in my mind, was key to surviving.

    As I crested a ridge, a sprawling facility appeared before me. Massive runways, enormous hangars, and absurdly sized aprons spread for miles. In the very middle of the facility a massive fuck-off gun was pointing straight at me.

    I immediately cut to the left and dove, conserving energy through the turn to get under what I hoped was the gun¡¯s firing angle.

    I locked it up and pushed my thrusters as hard as I could. I had reached Mach 3.2 by the time I blew past the gun, and popped the largest missile I had. It was, thankfully, optionally laser guided, so I lazed the connection point between the weapon body and the building it sprouted out of. As I cleared the far side of the facility, at Mach 3.4 and ignoring overheat warnings from both my leading edge sensors and the thruster packs, the missile penetrated into the facility. A heartbeat passed, and the facility vanished into a cloud of dust, fire, and hate as I entered a slow climb in the hopes of avoiding the shockwave.

    YOU HAVE FAILED AGAIN TUGGER. THE INCOMING SHOCKWAVE WILL BE STRONG ENOUGH TO SHAKE THIS CRAFT INTO ITS INDIVIDUAL BITS OF HARDWARE. WHY DID YOU USE THAT PARTICULAR MISSILE?

    ¡°The system let me sort by tonnage, so I just dropped the largest one that wasn¡¯t locked. What¡¯s the issue?¡±

    DO YOU KNOW HOW LARGE THAT MUNITION WAS?

    ¡°0.9 Tons? That¡¯s what it was listed as¡­¡±

    This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

    NO. THAT WAS 0.9T TONS. NINE TENTHS OF A TERATON. THOSE MUNITIONS ARE USUALLY USED AS MOON CRACKERS. WE WILL GO OVER PROPER MUNITION SELECTION ANOTHER TIME. DROP TO MACH 0.9, CLIMB TO ANGEL 15. WE HAVE TIME FOR A FEW MORE EVASIVE RUNS.

    I ran four more scenarios before Theridion cut me off. Two of them were ground bases again, one of them was another orbital station, and the worst was 10 minutes of calm flight. I failed the calm one, because Theridion claimed there was no enemy, and being so on edge when there was no threat was detrimental to my focus. Mechanical fucker wouldn¡¯t accept what he called ¡®excuses¡¯ when I said my nerves were shot.

    I managed to win against the orbital station by climbing hard until I could launch a missile that hit the station. I was lucky that it hit the barrel of their accelerator and not something unrelated to their orbital bombardment capabilities, but I would take it. I lost both ground bases again scenarios, though. The first was a lucky hit from a SAM launch that I was going to fast to avoid; Mach 3 leaves little room for maneuverability if you want to maintain control. I dumped speed the next time I saw the base, which gave them time to launch an enormous amount of manned and unmanned fighters. I climbed hard to try and avoid the swarms of enemy aircraft, but the gun that was in the middle of the base was agile enough that it could track me. With competent anti-air coverage at every altitude, I was just happy I survived long enough to both completely overheat my CIWS and run out of cannon ammunition thanks to the cloud of SAMs I shot down while avoiding the base gun. It hit me eventually, of course.

    VERY WELL, TUGGER. EXIT ATMOSPHERE. WE WILL RUN A FEW INSERTION ATTEMPTS, AND THEN ITS BACK TO THE REAL WORLD.

    ¡°Alrighty then.¡±

    I broke atmosphere, and followed the guidelines that Theridion put onto my HUD to reach a geostationary orbit.

    ¡°What¡¯s next? Didn¡¯t you say that this was supposed to be sub-orbital?¡±

    CORRECT. YOU¡¯LL NEED TO GO TO THE CARGO BAY AND RIG THE DOOR; THERE ARE MANUAL SAFETIES THAT NEED TO BE DISABLED IN ORDER TO ALLOW FOR THIS MANEUVER.

    ¡°Really? The jumpers aren¡¯t able to do it?¡±

    WHEN YOU HAVE JUMPERS, THEY ARE ABLE TO. THIS WILL NOT ALWAYS HAVE OTHER PEOPLE INVOLVED. SOMETIMES THE DROP IS CARGO THAT CANNOT SURVIVE REENTRY ON ITS OWN.

    ¡°So.. yeah, ok. Sure.¡± I got up and took the elevator down to the cargo bay.

    FOLLOW THESE STEPS EXACTLY. ANY DEVIATION COULD RESULT IN DEATH, DISMEMBERMENT, AND PROPERTY DAMAGE.

    I was careful to follow the steps, double checking the seal on my vac suit before purging the atmosphere in the cargo bay. Once the bay was at vacuum, the next step was removing floor panels that were secured with QDs instead of the normal counter-sunk machine screws and pulling a few pins that kept the cargo door on its rails. With the door disconnected, a crane attached to the ceiling pulled it out of the airframe and placed it into a hollow in the ceiling that I hadn¡¯t registered as important before. Finally, small plates were unfolded from a space in the airframe through the door frame. These plates, it looked like to me, would act as a diverter to maintain aerodynamics while entering atmosphere.

    Fixing these plates in place was the most dangerous part of the process. Getting them locked to the hull required leaving the ship for a spacewalk. Thankfully, both my regular vac suit and my armor had magnetized feet and palms, allowing me to stick almost anywhere to the hull. As a physical back up, because those were always important, the cargo crane also had a thin line; I suspected it was installed specifically for this specific task. Thankfully, the plating was affixed without any issue. I unclipped myself from the crane, and realized something as I stood next to what was now just a gaping hole in the side of my ship. The space ship. In space. Without any air around it.

    ¡°Uh, Theridion?¡±

    YES TUGGER?

    ¡°How am I supposed to get back to the rest of the ship? It didn¡¯t depressurized, did it?¡±

    NO TUGGER, THERE IS STILL PRESSURIZATION. THE ELEVATOR ACTS AS AN AIRLOCK. A COMPLETE DEPRESSURIZATION IS NOT NECESSARY YET, THERE IS NO COMBAT EXPECTED.

    That made sense. Except¡­ ¡°What happens if we lose power? I haven¡¯t seen stairs or a crew ladder to use instead of the elevator.¡±

    THE FLOOR AND CEILING ARE ENERGIZED INTO PLACE. WITHOUT POWER, THEY FOLD INTO THE SIDEWALL TO ALLOW CREW UNFETTERED ACCESS THROUGH THE ELEVATOR SHAFT.

    That made even more sense. I shrugged, and looked at the elevator. It was open, and unlike its normal white lights, it was bathed in green fluorescents. I stepped into the elevator, and looked at the control panel. Nothing was different; no differently colored buttons, no extra controls that had been behind a false panel. Just to see what would happen, I pushed the button for the flight deck. The door closed like normal, and the green lighting faded to yellow as the door shut. The lighting started flashing red as soon as the elevator was sealed, and mist poured in through vents in the ceiling. I heard hissing for a second, but it quickly stopped as mist stopped pouring in. The lights winked back to a solid green and I assumed the airlock was cycled since the elevator began to rise.

    I sat back into the pilot¡¯s seat, making sure that the screens and my control stick were properly adjusted. ¡°Ok, cargo bay should be set, and I¡¯m in the seat and ready. What¡¯s next?¡±

    NEXT, TUGGER, YOU DIVE. YOUR CURRENT ORBIT PLACES YOU AT THE BEGINNING OF A PARABOLIC ARC WITH THE LOWEST ALTITUDE BEING 70,000 FEET ABOVE THE TARGET. YOU PROVIDE OPERATORS WITH A 3 DEGREE WINDOW IN WHICH TO EXIT THE SPACECRAFT AND BEGIN THEIR MISSION. IF YOU ARE DROPPING CARGO, DEPENDING ON THE SET UP, YOU WILL HAVE A VERY BRIEF WINDOW IN WHICH TO DROP, SOMETIMES AS SHORT AS THIRTY SECONDS. YOU ARE NOT DROPPING CARGO CURRENTLY, SO WE WILL FORGO THAT PARTICULAR TRAINING. IT WILL BE DIFFERENT DEPENDING ON THE CRAFT YOU ARE PILOTING, ANYWAY. PRINTING ARC TO YOUR HUD. DIVE NOW.

    ¡°Let¡¯s do it.¡±

    I oriented the ship to be nose down, and started burning towards the planet. This turned out to be the easiest training so far; it went smoothly. Absolutely nothing went wrong. I followed the plotted course, and the dive and climb were both so shallow that I couldn¡¯t even feel the airframe rotate. There was just the slightest change to fuel usage once I started climbing, because the simulated weight had dropped with the team leaving the ship.

    ¡°That¡­ went according to plan?¡±

    CORRECT. NOT EVERYTHING IS VIOLENT. DROPPING FROM SO HIGH IN THE ATMOSPHERE MEANS YOU WILL LIKELY AVOID ATTRACTING ATTENTION, AND ANY HOSTILE FIRE WILL BE EITHER EASILY ESCAPED, OR UNDEFEATABLE. PERSONNEL INSERTION IS ONE OF THE EASIER JOBS YOU WILL HAVE. THE OPERATORS ARE THE ONES DOING THE WORK, IN THIS CASE.

    ¡°Are they training for these drops too?¡±

    I BELIEVE SO.

    ¡ª-¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª

    ¡°Dera, this jump is yours.¡±

    I shook my head.

    ¡°Really Dean? You¡¯re the squad lead, you should be the first one to drop. That was your whole thing, for a while. ¡®First one in, first one out¡¯. I got sick of hearing that, but now you want me to do your job?¡±

    Dean didn¡¯t even bother to look my way, his response calm and level. ¡°You get command if I¡¯d removed from duty, Dera. You aren¡¯t as comfortable leading as you need to be. Start the sim, and call the drop.¡±

    I stood at attention and saluted as my armor responded to my mental command and formed around me. ¡°SIR, YES SIR!¡± He hated when I did that, but if he wanted to issue me orders he should know what kind of response he was going to get. I sent a second mental command, and the screens embedded in the armor covering my eyes faded to black.

    They flickered back to life, showing the cargo bay of Wanderer 6 with the special clarity that only sensors in a vacuum could achieve. Given that the bay lights were red, I told Dean and Recluse to pull the bay door using hand signals, while I tied off with a personnel static line and deployed the aerodynamic panels as soon as the bay door as moved out of the way.

    With the door secure, I ordered armor and rocket checks. We were expecting that this next mission would need us to reach the ground as quickly as possible, just in case any self-destructing data had been put on a timer like it had before. It hadn¡¯t been in the brief that Tugger participated in since he didn¡¯t need to know, but the three of us had been given the whole account of the effort to track and capture Grasshopper. He loved his traps, and usually fed more information to agents who got to whatever repository he left the fastest.

    Knowing this, Dean¡¯s gut feeling that we would need to do SUPER-HERO landings was absolutely correct. It was the worst when Dean was correct. He tended to lecture, and they were always the same lecture, word for fucking word.

    ¡°The goal of a SUPER-HERO landing is two-fold. This is outline by the name itself. SUPER, or SUPplementary Entry Rocket, is used when extremely fast entry is required. As you should know, your armor is able to accept a specialty rocket booster which when attached to the back will allow the user to descend at rates which allow operators to reach the ground in approximately 40 seconds from insertion at 70,000 feet above the target. The rocket also provides assistance bleeding speed prior to landing when the operator properly adjusts nozzle direction. The rocket is discarded on landfall, allowing the operator to perform at optimal efficiency.

    HERO, or High Entry Radar Occlusion, explains why we perform such a dangerous maneuver in the first place. By entering at extreme altitudes and dropping as fast as we can, radar, lidar, and forms of scanning are given the minimal amount of time to find and lock operators. Further, your armor is specifically designed to have the minimal scanning signature that human biology allows for. When in the proper descent form, which is head first with your arms and legs together, feet pointed, operators have essentially no scannable signature. Simply put, we are the stealthiest things in the sky, and the best way to keep it that way is to get out of the sky.¡±

    Word for word, every time. It was almost unbelievable; in fact, if I hadn¡¯t grown up with him, I would have sworn that Dean had flash cards he used to practice his speeches.

    This echoed through my head as I checked over Dean and Recluse. The gear checks went without a hitch, and took most of the time we had left to the drop zone. I tapped at the pad on my wrist, alerting the pilot that the tac team was drop ready. bay lights turned yellow in response. I stood next to the hole in the floor, and as the lights started flashing, I knelt and tried to find the target we were supposed to drop on. A small gap in the vegetation, with a straight line leading away from it, seemed to be a likely choice. I confirmed the target with satellite imagery, and activated my comms, broadcasting to both the other tac team members and the pilot. ¡°Target confirmed. Commence drop. Fire Team, the light is green.¡±

    As soon as I stopped speaking, the lights in the cargo bay went to a steady green, and I fell out of the ship. ¡°Tac Lead, Out.¡±

    Dean and Recluse followed close behind, saying ¡°Tac Two, Out.¡± and ¡°Tac Three, Out.¡± respectively as they fell.

    We were all oriented face first, as proper, so I gave the fun order. ¡°Meteor, Meteor, Meteor.¡±

    As one, our rocket packs lit off, pushing us well past Mach 2. We screamed down as I kept an eye on my altimeter. At 7,500 feet, I said my next line. ¡°Rotate, Rotate, Rotate.¡± Small boosters attached to the sides of the rocket pack flipped us in the microseconds that the main rocket nozzle cut out, preserving pur trajectory while allowing for a landing at survivable speeds. As soon as we were vertical, I called ¡°Weapons Hot!¡± and pulled my Fang off of my thigh. I flicked the safety off and put it back on as I watched for hostiles.

    The main nozzles lit again, dumping speed until the packs ran out of fuel 30 feet above the ground. We dropped the rest of the way, rolling both to absorb the landing and to dislodge the rocket packs.

    An empty shed, one door hanging open, one on the ground, was all that greeted us on the gravel road I had seen cutting through the trees. It was old and weathered, the paints stripped from the wooden walls and metal roof; it looked like the door had fallen because the hinges had rusted away to dust.

    I stood and let my Fang snap back into place. ¡°Good job, buckos. Clean drop.¡± I feigned confidence as I stretched, and said ¡°Good enough, I think. It¡¯s almost jump time anyway, and then we get to do the real thing. End simulation.¡±

 CHAPTER 10

    The wireframe cockpit around me slowly vanished, revealing the nearly identical cockpit I had been in during my hours long venture through the virtual trainings. Nearly, because the four screens in front of me needed to be adjusted to where I had put them virtually; I had found specific angles reduced eye and neck strain. The other difference was what I could see from my viewport. The ship had been on autopilot the whole time I was training, following the vectors I had been sent.

    We were, according to a system view provided by the Navigation screen, halfway between the star and the Oort Cloud, roughly in the orbit of the second gas giant that happened to be the outermost planet. Since it was on the opposite side of its orbit, there was nothing around. I was a little confused, admittedly; it had been Gravitic Solutions that released the new wave of jump drives that used gravity to allow for translation. They needed to be clear of large masses, sure, but Lagrange points were just a best practice, not a real requirement. Being sent to the furthest-out L3 in the system seemed odd.

    ¡°Theridion, why did we need to fly so far out?¡±

    I BELIEVE IT IS AN OPSEC CONSIDERATION TUGGER. YOU WILL NEED TO VERIFY WITH DEINOPIDAE; THE TACTICAL TEAM HAS JUST EXITED THEIR OWN VR TRAINING IF YOU WISH TO SPEAK WITH THEM.

    ¡°I do. Where should I meet them?¡±

    STANDBY.

    BRIEFING ROOM 2. THE TEAM IS WAITING FOR YOU.

    I got out of the cockpit and took a short elevator ride down to the personnel suite. As soon as the door opened, I could hear the siblings arguing.

    ¡°¡­ere¡¯s no way I was going to be able to coordinate the drop safely and spot at the same time! I don¡¯t give a fuck whatyou think, you¡¯re just wrong.¡±

    ¡°Not only do I know that I¡¯m not, Dysdera, I have proof. On three separate occasions you¡¯ve lead a SUPER-HERO maneuver while also spotting the LZ with your rifle leveled. You should have¡­¡±

    ¡°Dean.¡± Dysdera cut him off, nodding at me as as I stood in the entrance to the briefing room.

    ¡°Tugger. Finally. Sit.¡± Dean pointed at the other seat in the room. This briefing room was much smaller than the one we had used before, but contained a plain table and only four chairs, constructed in the same style as the other room. I took the spot I was directed to. ¡°Before we start, you had a question Tugger?¡± Dean looked at me expectantly.

    ¡°Uh, yeah. Why are we out here? Civilian jumps don¡¯t need this much space, and this is far from a civilian ship.¡±

    ¡°How much do you know about Rumors Mining Corporation? Actually, disregard that question. How much do you know about Gravitic Solutions?¡±

    ¡°Uh¡­¡± I hadn¡¯t had to think about corporate history since indoc. ¡°It was an Earth based aerospace company, I think, that specialized in building and refitting spacecraft to have centripetal gravity, and then they discovered how to make and use tungstanium to produce gravity using electrical power. Protecting that secret led GS to becoming a military superpower, and buying smaller companies like Rumors to streamline material acquisition¡­¡± I petered off, wracking my brain. ¡°That¡¯s it. That¡¯s all I¡¯ve got.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s the sum total of the unclassified history. This is a part of the real history. Gravitic Solutions, our employer, used to be Earth military. Training time is scarce when jump drives allow for near instant travel for everyone, so it became tradition to coast to jump points instead of burning to them, just for the extra training time. This tradition became policy when old style jump drives became traceable; getting too far away to see meant not being tracked. I¡¯m sure I don¡¯t need to explain to you why military operations needed to remain untracked. Being this far out for a jump is both policy and tradition. If we really need to get somewhere, we don¡¯t take the time, but when we can we will.¡±

    ¡°Uh. Alright then. Is that the only reason we¡¯re out here?¡±

    ¡°Pretty much Tug. But, we have a pre-mission brief. Tell me what you¡¯ll be doing once we jump.¡±

    ¡°Well¡­¡± I looked at the gunmetal colored ceiling for a second, collecting my thoughts. ¡°I jump us in, drop you three off either on the ground or intra-atmosphere, and then pick you three up after your mission is finished.¡±

    ¡°And here I thought you were smarter than that.¡± Dean tapped at his wrist pad, and the table surface lit up with a display of what I assumed was a map of the system we would be jumping into. Dean pointed at various points on the map as he outlined his plan. ¡°We jump into the system above this planetary ring and dive in to avoid being detected as long as possible. From there, we spend as much time as we need to observing the system to make sure there¡¯s no actively hostile emplacements in orbit around the planet. We have telemetry from a scanning craft that was in system a few days ago, but it¡¯s rough since the ship left as soon as it noticed the lab complex. All good so far?¡±Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

    I nodded at the same time as Dysdera, so Dean continued. ¡°Once we decide to call orbit clear, you¡¯ll put us in a geostationary that will allow for a SUPER-HERO jump or ground insertion while giving us a better view of what kind of defenses the station has. You and Theridion will be scanning for those defenses, and depending on what you find, we¡¯ll figure out what kind of support Wanderer 6 will be providing. Questions?¡±

    Recluse and Dysdera both shook their heads. Dean looked at me expectantly. ¡°Let¡¯s hear it, Tugger.¡±

    ¡°What do you mean when you say that Wanderer 6 will provide support once you get to the ground?¡±

    ¡°Who said anything about getting to the ground? If you see heavy enough anti-air to make a SUPER-HERO too dangerous, we get to do some orbital bombardments. If there¡¯s little to no AA, you drop us off and pull circles to provide air support while we¡¯re grounded. Your job is what enables us to do these missions. Good enough?¡±

    ¡°Guess so. When are we jumping?¡± I stood as I replied. All I heard was that the sooner I got this done with, the sooner I could go chart the galaxy.

    ¡°We jump when you get back to the cockpit and jump us. No rest for the wicked.¡±

    Dysdera gave me a playful salute as I left the briefing room.

    ¡°Stop that shit, Dera! We still aren¡¯t done with your lack of confidence. Let¡¯s start from the top. During a SUPER-HERO, the lea¡­¡± The elevator doors closed, cutting of Dean¡¯s lambasting of his sister.

    ¡°Theridion, did you get the coordinates that we¡¯ll be jumping to? I never got specifics, and if Dean expects me to put this ship inside the system I need something specific.

    YES TUGGER. I HAVE EVERYTHING WE WILL NEED TO JUMP SUCCESSFULLY.

    I sat down in the cockpit and adjusted the joystick arm. ¡°In that case, let¡¯s jump.¡±

    JUMP VECTORS INPUT. GRAVITY WELL GENERATION STANDING BY.

    I keyed the PA system and said ¡°Attention attention attention, jump imminent. Secure and report.¡± No one had told me otherwise, so I assumed that the jump announcements I had been trained to use when there were others in my ship were good enough.

    ¡°Dysdera, secured for jump.¡±

    ¡°Recluse, secured.¡±

    ¡°Deinopidae, secured for jump. Loose cargo secured.¡±

    Once everyone had reported back, I keyed the PA again. ¡°Crew, stand by for jump.¡± I released the PA. ¡°Theridion, send it.¡±

    SENDING IT. BRACE FOR JUMP.

    JUMP. JUMP. JUMP.

    The system voice was slightly different to what I was to used to on Dusty Star, but it was close enough to not be notable. What was notable, however, was the jump itself. There was none of the twisting that I had had to grow used to; this ship¡¯s drive produced something that I could only describe as a pulsing instead.

    I had been unfortunate enough to experience uneven pressurizations few years ago. This phenomenon occurs when the atmosphere regulation has a malfunction and attempts to modulate ship pressure like normal. What happens instead is that the craft will overpressurize (a throughly unpleasant feeling), the regulator will sense the excess pressurization, and attempt to correct by lowering pressure. This ends in, at the best, extreme discomfort as the pressure in your ship varies wildly. This jump drive felt like uneven pressurization modulation, but from inside.

    It was uncomfortable, for sure, but still better than that nausea-inducing twist that Dusty Star had. The feeling went away with a thrummm that echoed through the ship. Simultaneously, the view of space I had changed instantaneously to show a blue planet with a ring made of large rocky debris positioned just below the ship that looked to be at least 500 feet thick at our location. It would, surprisingly, make for a very good hiding place; most of the planetary rings I knew of were made of gravel and particulate, and usually were a few feet in depth at most.

    The moment I had my bearings, I boosted straight down into the field and latched on to one of the larger rocks. Once the gravity plates on the bottom of the landing gear feet were showing as stabilized, I brought up a view of the ship¡¯s passive scanners onto the screens in front of me according to the instructions that Theridion fed me.

    While the scan display was clearing up, Dean poked his head into the cockpit. ¡°Anything yet?¡±

    ¡°Not in five minutes, no. I¡¯ll let you know what we see in half an hour or so.¡±

    ¡°Focus on anything in a low orbit. Debris, satellites, anything. We¡¯ve had people killed from weaponized debris before, I don¡¯t want it to happen this time. Let me know if you find anything in the next four hours. If not, head into the orbit we briefed earlier. Theridion should have the details.¡± Without another word, he spun on his heel and took the elevator.

    ¡°Theridion, are you able to intake and process information if I¡¯m not concious?¡±

    YES TUGGER. TO ANSWER THE QUESTION YOU ARE ABOUT TO ASK, YES, YOU CAN SLEEP FOR NOW. I WILL WAKE YOU UP WHEN THE SCANNERS PICK UP SOMETHING NOTABLE OR AT THE FOUR HOUR MARK.

    ¡°Fantastic. Naptime it is.¡±

    I reclined my seat, and closed my eyes as I crossed my arms. Floating in space, waiting for a call; just like old times.

    ¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª

    TUGGER. WAKE UP.

    I jolted awake, taking a second to get my bearings. ¡°Yup, I¡¯m up. I¡¯m awake.¡± I stretched, and failed to rub my face when my helmet got in the way. ¡°What did we find?¡±

    HUNDREDS OF SATELLITES, AND A FAIR AMOUNT OF SMALL DEBRIS. MY RECOMMENDATION IS UTILIZING THE CIWS LASERS TO VAPORIZE ANY DEBRIS THAT WILL STRIKE THE SHIP OR ITS SHIELDING, AND TO DISABLE THE THRUSTER ON ANY SATELLITE THAT WOULD POSE A DANGER. DOING SO WILL ALLOW US TO SIT IN ORBIT AND CONDUCT ACTIVE SCANNING.

    ¡°What¡¯s the timeline for that?¡±

    REALISTIC EXPECTATIONS SHOULD BE TWELVE TO TWENTY FOUR HOURS UNTIL WE CAN BE SURE ENOUGH OF PLANET-BOUND DEFENSIVE MEASURES. DEINOPIDAE HAS ALREADY GIVEN HIS STAMP OF APPROVAL FOR THE LAG TIME. HE SAID, TO QUOTE, ¡°DERA AND TUG GET MORE TRAINING TIME, I GUESS¡±.

    ¡°Alright then. Do we have a flight plan?¡±

    NEGATIVE. JUMP DRIVE CHARGING.

    ¡°That works too, I guess. Have you let the other three know?¡±

    AFFIRM. THEY ARE ALREADY SECURED.

    I keyed the PA system. ¡°Standby for jump.¡±

    JUMPING.

    JUMP. JUMP. JUMP.

    This jump was even gentler than the previous one; I assumed because of the relatively short distance covered. My view winked from tumbling rocks to the planet we had been scanning. As expected, there was no ring system, and the large moon was just visible peeking over, from my angle, the right shoulder of the planet.

    The planet was almost completely covered in a shallow ocean, with a mountainous archipelago that wrapped around a third of the planets equator. I wasn¡¯t a geologist by any means, having never set foot on a planet myself, but it looked to me like the continental plates of this world were just hemispheres that were always pushed into each other at the same place.

    There were bands of weather at an angle to the islands, subjecting the landmass to practically every weather pattern at the same time. This weathering was clearly hard on the mountains, as they were rounded and lacked the jaggedness I had always associated with mountains. The lab we were targeting was situated at the peak of a mountain that was so eroded it looked like more of a large mound than anything else. It was relatively secluded from the rest of the island chain; in short, anti-air defenses looked like they would be in short supply. Still, an once of prevention was worth a pound of hostile ordinance up the ass.

    ¡°Theridion, are you handling targeting for the CIWS?¡±

    YES. COMMENCING SCANNING.

    ¡°Guess we just get to hurry up and wait.¡±

 CHAPTER 11

    ¡°Drop. Drop. Drop.¡±

    I heard Dean call for the team to exit the ship as I did a low approach of the facility, and closed the cargo bay door as soon as I saw the three of them fall out of sight of the bay door camera.

    We had spent 16 hours in orbit, verifying and re-verifying the scans of the surface and what little we could see of what lay beneath the surface of the oceans. There was nothing that we could find. No landing pads, no energy collection, no defensive structures what so ever. The complete lack of infrastructure was, according to Dean, abnormal. He had told me about how his team had been after this particular target a number of times in the past, and had always had to deal with heavy anti-air resistance, whether by matching force for force, or using stealth to avoid being attacked in the first place. Having nothing to fight or avoid had put everyone on edge, since the rest of the team being unsettled was certainly out of my comfort zone.

    After the three of them spent hours ¡®deliberating¡¯ as Dean called it, the entirety of which I was told in no uncertain to stay in the cockpit, they made the call to trust the sensor data and have me drop them just a few hundred feet above the facility and then pull CAS duty. Flying circles around the compound also made it quicker to ex-fil, which Dean said was a necessity with the change in defenses.

    Once I had divested the team and closed the cargo bay, I rose to 1,000 feet above the facility and set the autopilot to pull tight circles. I wanted to focus on covering the team, and splitting my attention between my piloting and my weapons would make both efforts worthless. My radio crackled, likely from some kind of atmospheric interference.

    ¡°JULIET 4, JULIET 1. SHOW RESPONSE TEAM GROUNDED AT THIS TIME.¡±

    I keyed my radio, feeling the microphone integrated into my helmet brushing my lips as I spoke. ¡°Juliet 1, Juliet 4. Response Team grounded. Aerial standing by.¡±

    ¡°4, 1. COPY AERIAL STANDING BY. BEGINNING OPERATION.¡±

    With that, the line went silent, save for the slight atmospheric hiss. With what I had seen of this group, I expected to get calls for every bit of ordinance I had. Instead?

    Radio. Silence.

    Over thirty minutes went by with absolutely nothing over comms; no CAS requests, no updates, not even banter. Dean had told me before they dropped that radio silence was important, but it felt like it had been a really long time. I keyed my radio.

    ¡°1, 4, radio check, how copy?¡±

    No reply.

    ¡°1, 4. Radio check. How copy?¡±

    Still nothing.

    ¡°Juliet 1, Juliet 4. Radio function check. How copy?¡±

    Static.

    ¡°All radios this frequency, Juliet 4. Radio check, reply how copy.¡±

    ¡°JULIET 4, JULIET ACTUAL. MAINTAIN RADIO DISCIPLINE. STANDBY FOR SUPPORT CALLS.¡±

    Oop. Dean called himself Actual instead of 1; I guess I had pissed him off by violating his radio silence. I didn¡¯t feel all that bad, given that I was new to all of this, and they had just abandoned me to shooting at shit on the ground.

    ¡°Theridion, anything we can do to pass the time? I don¡¯t know how one this is going to take, and I don¡¯t want to just sit here and stare at an empty building.¡±

    WOULD YOU LIKE TO HEAR A STORY FROM WHEN DEINOPIDAE WAS IN TRAINING?

    ¡°Fuck it, why not. Tell me a story.¡±

    ¡®TWAS A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT, WHEN THE CAPTAIN SAID¡­

    <hr>

    ¡°DEINOPIDAE! Get your head out of your ass and your ass out of that ditch! Your job is to be a spotter, not to cower. They¡¯re just bullets. Don¡¯t be a pussy.¡±

    Dean didn¡¯t know how to respond to that, so he chose not to. He was just a cadet, after all. This was his first time in the field, and the ancient rifle he thought he had gotten used to carrying felt like and awkward piece of metal and plastic, not the extension of myself it was supposed to be.

    And ancient it truly was; the venerable M7A1. Hundreds of years of service with different military and paramilitary organizations has given the weapon a reputation for functionality. Of course, Gravitic Solutions had far better options to give their people. No, Dean had been issued this particular M7, serial number 63M99999, as a punishment.

    Between how heavy the weapon itself was and how little ammunition he was able to carry, this particular outing promised to be worse than expected. He had scored the highest in his class in both class work and physical fitness, and was on track to beat the training programs record. His instructors, according to them, wanted to encourage him. Of course their version of encouragement was to saddle him with the worst possible situation every time the could.

    A group project? Dean was put with the most fractious, argumentative, pig-headed classmates he had, and told in no uncertain terms that he was in charge. Running in formation? Dean was charged with getting water to anyone who fell out, and only a divine fucking miracle would save his ass if he wasn¡¯t in formation at the end of the run.

    This field exercise, which Dean had been instructed to plan, was going to be a shitshow. He was just a regular front-line gunner, without any kind of authority at all. He had planned the fucking thing, and it would go one of two ways; either his plan worked, and whoever was ¡®in charge¡¯ would get the praise, or it would go bad and he would get blamed.

    Two rounds whistled over his head, and Dean just sighed as he rolled out of the shallow ditch and started through his scope. The wooded ridgeline they were supposed to take was quiet, the rain hammering the forest concealing any sounds of movement and making every bit of low lying vegetation shaking constantly. He turned thermal highlighting on, and saw an outline of someone standing a few feet into the treeline, hidden visually behind bushes. The glowing puddle growing on the base of the tree they were facing was pretty clear.Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

    ¡°Kilo Actual, Kilo 5-5. One target spotted, locale six. Received fire from same location.¡± He spoke quietly into his boom mic as he pressed his radio key. He was supposed to be a fucking leader, not a spotter with an underpowered rifle, and the demotion stung.

    ¡°Kilo 5-5, Kilo Actual. Verify locale six.¡±

    Dean rolled his eyes as he keyed his radio. ¡°Actual, 5-5. Wooded ridgeline, 500 meters north of insertion. Requesting permission to push.¡±

    ¡°5-5, Actual. Confirm position.¡±

    ¡°Actual, 5-5. Holding at waypoint 2, as briefed.¡±

    ¡°5-5, Actual. Provide visual description.¡±

    That was a weird request. ¡°Actual, 5-5. Latch-key.¡±

    ¡°5-5, Actual. Say again?¡±

    Dean was getting suspicious. Latch-key was the beginning of a verbal handshake to make sure that comms hadn¡¯t been compromised. ¡®Say again¡¯ was far from the correct answer, and everything so far had been crystal clear.

    ¡°Actual, 5-5. Latch-key.¡±

    ¡°5-5, Actual. Provide a visual description of your current location.¡±

    ¡°Actual, 5-5. Latch-key.¡±

    There was no response. Dean looked at his instructor, wordlessly asking what he should do.

    ¡°Are you fucking stupid, cadet? I¡¯m not here. Figure it out yourself.¡±

    Dean nodded, and keyed his radio. ¡°All radios this frequency, all radios this frequency. Comms compromised. I say again, comms compromised. Begin local command, action plan Bravo-Niner. Kilo 5-5, Out.¡± He released his push-to-talk, turned his transmitter off, and put a round through the head of the person he had spotted, who apparently had the largest bladder in the local cluster.

    They dropped, and Dean watched as five other people poured out of what he could only assume was a buried bunker. Using the UV laser on his rifle, he quickly marked all five, and an absolute torrent of mortar fire quickly turned the wooded ridgeline to a smoking heap of dirt and charc¡­

    <hr>

    The radio crackled to life, cutting off Theridion¡¯s tale.

    ¡°4, 1. REQUESTING IMMEDIATE CAS, LASING ONE REINFORCED BUILDING. FRIENDLIES DANGER CLOSE 200 METERS. CLEARED TO ENGAGE.¡±

    Theridion silently selected a munition and printed out the proper reply, leaving me to press the Lauch button and key the radio.

    ¡°1, 4. Friendlies Danger Close 200. Tally. Pickle 1, 15 seconds to impact.¡±

    ¡°4, 1. REQUESTING IMMEDIATE CAS, LASING ONE HARDENED ENEMY COMBATANT. FRIENDLIES DANGER CLOSE 100 METERS. REQUESTING CANNON FIRE. CLEARED TO ENGAGE.¡±

    Once again, Theridion printed the proper response while I brought one of the main cannons to bear.

    ¡°1, 4. Friendlies Danger Close 100. Tally. Guns.¡±

    With that, I started dumping 130mm rounds into the ground. The target was some kind of treaded vehicle absolutely bristling with weapons, unloading into a hillside behind which two of the team were hiding. The vehicles reactive armor protected it from the first three or four rounds, but one 130mm round every second was too much for the vehicle to absorb. Within 10 seconds, I had turned the target into a heap of scrap, gently smoking in its crater of a grave.

    There was a flash, then a massive shockwave that shook the ship as the bomb I had dropped impacted the targeted building. The cloud of dust and debris it sent up blinded me immediately.

    ¡°1, 4. Be advised, no visual contact. Aerial support firing in the blind.¡±

    ¡°4, 1. NEGATIVE. DEPART DEBRIS CLOUD, OBSERVE AND REPORT WEATHER CONDITIONS. STANDBY.¡±

    ¡°1, 4. Copy.¡±

    I took over from the auto pilot, peeling away from the circle I had been pulling to fly out and slightly down.

    ¡°Theridion, is there a way for us to get this dust cleared?¡±

    I BELIEVE THAT DEINOPIDAE WANTS YOU TO LOOK FOR THE NEXT WEATHER BAND TO HAVE RAIN KNOCK DOWN THE DUST. THE DEBRIS IS FOULING TOO MANY SENSORS FOR ME TO GENERATE ACCURATE METEOROLOGICAL PREDICTIONS.

    ¡°And if there¡¯s nothing close?¡±

    Theridion didn¡¯t respond. The ship quickly broke out of the dust cloud, the ocean extending to the horizon bracketed with islands in my peripheral vision. A completely clear view, with not a single cloud in sight.

    ¡°Shit.¡±

    TURN AROUND TUGGER.

    I pulled a 180o turn, and was greeted with a massive storm wall, angry black clouds reaching tens of thousands of feet into the air unloading sheets of water and constant lightning strikes. On one hand, it was almost to the island and seemed to already be cutting down on some of the dust. On the other hand, I wasn¡¯t confident in pulling CAS while I was the highest thing around in a thunderstorm. Filled with explosives.

    ¡°Theridion?¡±

    PRINTING COMMS NOW. I AGREE.

    I keyed my radio and spoke as quickly as I could.

    ¡°14showCASunableduetoweatherecommendgroundteamtakeshelterfromextremeweather¡±

    ¡°4, 1. REPEAT.¡±

    I took a breath. ¡°1, 4. Show CAS unable due to weather. Recommend ground team takes shelter from extreme weather.¡±

    ¡°4, 1. PROVIDE CONFIRMATION CODE.¡±

    broadcasting

    ¡°1, 4 ALPHA. CONFIRMATION CODE NOVEMBER OSCAR WHISKEY NINER NINER. TAKE IMMEDIATE SHELTER.¡±

    terminate broadcast

    ¡°4, 1. SOLID COPY. TAKING COVER. IN CASE OF COMMUNICATION SEVERANCE, RETURN TO OVERWATCH WHEN ABLE.¡±

    ¡°1, 4. Copy. Egressing ex-atmo.¡±

    ¡°4,1. ROGER.¡±

    I pulled another 180o turn and started ascending as quickly as I could without losing speed. A lightning strike was absolutely not something I wanted to deal with, so I wanted to get as far away as I could, as quickly as I could.

    It took five minutes of stress filled silence to climb above the anvil of the storm. I leveled out and slowed the ship until it was just barely staying in the air.

    ¡°Theridion, can you outline the island for me?¡±

    SHIP SCREEN OR HUD?

    ¡°HUD. I¡¯m going to go behind the storm. Hopefully they don¡¯t need any help. Actually¡­¡± I keyed my radio. ¡°1, 4. Status update?¡±

    ¡°4, 1. IN FACILITY. MAINTAIN RADIO SILENCE.¡±

    Well, alright then. I looked down, and saw the storm was well over the island by this point.

    ¡°Theridion, set the autopilot to keep us over the island and above the anvil. No sense in flying past and coming back, if the weather is just going to blow past.¡±

    AUTOPILOT SET.

    <hr>

    It took almost four hours for the storm to pass, leaving behind a sheet of low lying clouds which were kind enough to not dump rain or electrical discharge at every possible moment. I entered as steep a dive as possible without having an AOA warning, and keyed my radio.

    ¡°1, 4. Pushing to BP.¡±

    A crackle of static burst through my radio. I wasn¡¯t sure if I heard words in it or not.

    ¡°1, 4. Pushing to BP, how copy.¡±

    Another crackle, with more of what could have been garbled words. I still wasn¡¯t sure. Theridion printed something on the comm screen for me to read out.

    ¡°1, 4. Unable to understand. Transmit dots.¡±

    The radio burst into intermittent static after that, with short and long bursts. I recognized it as some kind of code, but I had no idea how to translate it. My ride-along, thankfully, understood.

    TUGGER, DIVE FASTER AND TOWARD THIS WAYPOINT. A stylized map marker popped up in my HUD, within the outline of the island but just barely. OPEN BAY DOORS AT 500 FEET AND IMMEDIATELY LEVEL OUT. THE TEAM WILL EXFIL WITHOUT YOU LANDING.

    ¡°Are we going to crash? Pulling out of a full dive should take more than 500 feet.¡±

    I WILL BE FIRING THE RCS THRUSTERS TO COMPENSATE. IT MAY STRESS THE SUPERSTRUCTURE, BUT SO BE IT. FASTER.

    I pushed the throttle until it bottomed out, ignoring the ship yelling at me about unimportant things like ¡®Terrain¡¯ and ¡®Stall¡¯. I kept an eye on my altitude, and watched my airspeed climb at the same time. I hit 750 feet at Mach 1.4 when Theridion started yelling.

    TAKING CONTROL. THROTTLE IN IDLE, RCS THRUST IN USE, OPENING CARGO BAY DOOR. FLARING.

    The ship groaned as the RCS thrusters and flight controls worked in unison, rotating the ship in a fraction of a second and shedding hundreds of feet per second from our airspeed. We broke through the cloud cover, dipping just below 300 feet, and I was glad that Theridion had taken over flying; I would have missed the absolute devastation otherwise.

    The island¡¯s mounded shape had been demolished, massive craters over a flat topped hill that couldn¡¯t have been caused by the storm. The facility, the one I had dropped the bomb on, was sticking out of the new top of the hill by about 50 feet. It didn¡¯t look like it had been hit by a 4000 pound bomb, save for all the burned concrete.

    The marked point we were flying towards¡­ falling towards, really, was next to a massive cloud of black smoke billowing out of the ground. I took control from the autopilot and flew low and slow, dipping down to 250 feet. I was able to make out the three members of the ground team hunkered down next to the smoke, taking a knee with their weapons leveled. As one, they stowed their weapons and jumped.

    DROPPING SPEED ROPES.

    Three ropes were fired out of the cargo bay, exactly where I wasn¡¯t sure. As the team members superhuman jumps, at least 30 feet up, slowed, they grabbed the ropes and were whipped away from the island as I bumped up the throttle slightly at Theridion¡¯s urging. The team clambered up their ropes faster than I expected and closed the bay door as they pulled the trailing rope in after them.

    Based off the camera feed from the cargo bay, it had been a rough mission. Each of the three were spattered with something red; I assumed blood. None of their weapons had magazines inserted, so I was willing to bet they had also ran out of ammunition. One of them, I thought Recluse, had a piece of rebar stuck through their forearm, piercing into and out of their armor on either side of the limb.

    They looked rough.

    ¡°Theridion, do we have comms yet?¡±

    NEGATIVE. DEINOPIDAE HAS REQUESTED WE MEET IN BRIEFING ROOM ONE IN THIRTY MINUTES.

    ¡°Have the autopilot get us to L2. I¡¯m going to see what I can help with.¡±

 NOT A CHAPTER

    My apologies for my absence. Job uncertainty and then a trans-atlantic move were unconducive for my ability to write. I have some free time now, and had intended to use it to get pulled back in to writing this story. Get it? Because pull is in the title? Ha.

    I cannot, in good conscience, continue the story as and where it stands. The world building is shoddy, the characters are flat, and the prose is bith ill-timed and lacking sufficient visual detail. I have begun the process of rewriting, but I can and will not provide a time frame for releases.

    I do not know what will happen with the currently posted portion of the story, but the most likely thing is that I''ll just delete them as the first of the new chapters goes up, metrics be damned.

    Thank you for taking the time to read my story, and to read my prattling. I''ll put some of the worldbuilding that I''m happy with below; the best part about firm sci-fi is getting to learn about cool tech that exists in the real world.

    Thermoacoustic powerplants - Electrical, or TAPEs, are the gold standard in space-faring power plants for heat and electrical generation. Production of heat and electricity uses both fission and fusion under different circumstances for heat, and piezoelectric devices and a large assortment of electrical generation devices for electrical generation.If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

    Using purpose built batteries, a fission reaction is started. The heat from this reaction is used by dedicated piezoelectrics to provide the power required for a sustained fusion reaction. By rapidly heating and cooling the piezoelectric crystal elements, causing them to flex, they generate a charge which is directed into capacitors. These capacitors provide the electrical power for the magnetic containment of the initial fusion reaction. The heat from the fusion reaction is then used to generate electrical power for all other ship functions, with a priority on recharging the fission jumpstart battery, and relieves the piezoelectrics to allow the fusion reaction to be truly self-sustaining and to allow the more dangerous fission reactor to spin down.

    Heat from the TAPEs is also pulled to other ship systems, for uses such as keeping fuel fluidized and keeping the ships atmosphere from freeze drying crews.

    TAPEs also serves to reduce heat build up in spacecraft by translating heat energy into sound that is carried inside of RCS ejections.

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