《Drone Fleet? [Sci-Fi, Ship building]》


 01: Game or Not?

    "All locks are decoupled, you''re free to go. Safe voyage." Came the common response from traffic control. I flipped the switch for the EMF Drive and held down the button for straight Reverse. The screen showing what was directly behind me showed nothing but cold black nothingness dotted with stars, while the brightly lit, scarred, and pitted orbital skin started to fall away through the armor glass.


    These slow departures and arrivals always made it seem like the orbitals or stations were moving, not me, though logically I knew the Flying Brick that was my work and home was a thing that was actually moving. Well, relatively. In space, everything is relative and everything is technically moving. Once far enough away from the orbital, I locked in the Full Reverse on the EMF Drive, so I didn''t have to hold the button. The EMF Drive or Electromagnetic Field Drive was one of those very old technologies that no one fully understands. Originally designed as radiation shielding, someone way back figured out that if it was pulsed in certain patterns, it would actually move a vessel. It wasn''t a strong amount of "thrust," but it served well as a Reaction Control System. Actual forms of movement have advanced considerably, and so the reasons why the EMF Drive worked were never actually found, just relegated to the general acceptance of ¡°it works. Therefore, we use it.¡±


    At 500 meters out, I killed the reverse momentum gain and swung the ship around. The orbital slowly slid off to the left of the armor glass as the bow came about. Once fully turned 180 degrees, I locked in the forward ¡°thrust¡± and waited the ten or so minutes to make it the extra 500 meters to the safety limit. At the limit, I flipped over to the Grav Drive. There was a brief sensation of gravity shifting around me before the inertial dampeners caught in, and my ship started falling at 2.6 Gravs per second per second. At this rate, it would take about four and a half days to reach the gate. I could go faster, but my scheduled departure date was then, and until just before I arrived, the gate would be pointing at some other star on the trade routes. Those ships with their own Rift Drives could pretty much go anywhere they wanted, but for ships like the Flying Brick I was subjugated to the trade routes, shipping lines, and interstellar roads dictated by the system that managed the gate. Four days heading to the gate, about a week in transit in the Rift, and probably another three to four days approaching the next orbital to drop off the load of lead. Very exciting. I set the autopilot and watched for a full nine or ten minutes to see if the ship would correctly adjust to its course. Once we hit the next waypoint, the ship turned two degrees to the port, and dropped down to 2.5 Gravs per second per second. Satisfied that everything was working correctly, I set my tablet to alert me if anything was not going according to the program and got up to do the needful.


    My life consisted of a box. A box that moved boxes from one large box to another large box around different stars. I had a cockpit, a small galley, a head or bathroom, sani-box or shower, a bunk, and a small rec room which included a set of weights and my gaming system. A small box that hauls boxes. All so very exciting.


    My neuro gaming system was the only thing that truly kept me sane on these long voyages. While I had to sink a considerable amount of money into the system, it literally paid for itself every day. The AI was capable of spinning up pretty much any requested scenario or game-like environment, everything from top-down RTS to flight simulators, from first-person shooters to fantasy role-playing games. It was a completely immersive system, and its only downside was that sometimes it got a little confusing as to what was real and what was make-believe. Unfortunately, I''ve been on this Flying Brick for far too long.


    I was on my second day in the rift, green energy mixing with other random radiant colors rippled around the space or bubble of space or whatever the hell as my ship flew through an alternative reality or something like that. I didn''t really know the science behind it, and honestly, I''m not sure that the people who are way smarter than I am know the science behind it. Point being, the rift was a strange place with slightly strange physics that made going from one star system to the next take six days instead of forty plus years.


    Like every other day, I woke up, used the head, cooked myself a meal, checked my heading, and ran a visual site inspection of all the sensor heads in my little box part of the ship that would alert me if something was wrong. The only break in routine from any other day was a scrubber change, which itself was simple scheduled maintenance. After which I spent an hour exercising and got cleaned up in the sani-box.


    I stared at my game console, unsure of what I actually wanted to do today. I had played so many fantasy games, tactical games, first-person shooters, and real-time strategy games. I was just pretty much out of ideas. Still, the only option I actually had was to read a book, stare out the port into the unnerving rift, or play a game. I''ve lived 1000 lives in games. It would not be incorrect to say I spent possibly too much time in there, but the other option was waiting. Waiting for the next port, waiting for the next port after that, and waiting for the next port after that.


    It has been several years on the Flying Brick, and as much as I wanted to see people, as soon as I got onto the actual orbitals, I just kind of shut down. I''m too introverted to be around a crowded station or planet, and possibly not introverted enough to stay all alone on this damn ship. I sat my ass down in my comfy chair, the Neuro headset in my hands, still debating on whether or not I wanted to actually do anything. I could watch a movie. With a sigh I placed the headset on, got comfy, and waited for it to boot up. Once into the systems, it would hijack my neural functions and cause me to go into a state of paralysis, so it didn''t flail around my little ship while thinking I was in some fantasy world. With a deep breath, I found myself in my home setting.


    There were no actual lights in here. The overhead was a white color and kind of glowed, which made me think of the ceiling as being a light, but they didn''t cast any shadows, and everything was kind of lit up from everywhere. So technically no actual lights. The walls were covered in various different games, snapshots of things I enjoyed playing multiple times. The floor was a dull metal gray reminiscent of my ship because I''m not very creative. Apart from a sofa and coffee table in front of a large screen where I could sit and watch movies, there really wasn''t much to the room. I''ve seen videos of people''s home rooms that were basically large mansions or expansive space stations. Honestly speaking, my little corner of the galaxy was just a brighter version of my corner of the galaxy in the real universe.


    I sat down in the chair, put my feet up on a white coffee table, and stared at the blank large screen.


    "Good morning, Grant," My Neuro¡¯s A.I. said in a cool female voice.


    "Morning,Neuro." I replied, noting the lack of excitement in my own voice.


    "What would you like to do today?"


    "I''m not sure, Neuro."


    "Perhaps I could assist in the creation of something new based on your current mood. What troubles you today, Grant?"


    I had to think about that for a moment. "My real life is the same old, same old thing, every day, every week, every month, every year. I kind of just wish I had something slightly more exciting, you know? I wanna do things like make more money, upgrade my ship, you know, want a world with more action and hot girls." Maybe that was kind of childish, but seriously, I was kind of getting bored.


    "I think I can make a game based on that suggestion. Would you like to give it a try?"


    I considered for a few moments, shrugged, and said, ¡°Sure, why not?''"


    "Sit back, close your eyes, and take a deep breath." Nero said.


    I did as instructed, laying my head back on the couch and closing my eyes. My eyes were not actually closed as this whole place was virtual and I pretty much saw a loading screen the moment I shut them.


    Loading, new world. Please wait¡­


    Calibrating¡­


    Starting opening sequence¡­


    As the loading screen disappeared and the light started to brighten, I was thrown from my seat and into the wall.


    Pain shot through my shoulder, the Neuro helmet tumbled off, freeing me from its paralyzing embrace, the world around me went dark and silent. For a moment or two, I thought maybe I had been knocked unconscious as everything was completely silent and all sense of direction was completely gone. As the dull red emergency lights and the few blowers that worked on auxiliary power kicked in, I realized it wasn''t me that was out, it was the ship. Maybe we hit something, but that didn''t really make any sense because I never heard of anybody actually hitting anything in the rift and if we had impacted something, it should have caused a shuddering rumble, if not a loud bang resounding through the ship¡¯s superstructure. It was like the whole thing just suddenly decelerated.


    I tried to clear my head and catch my breath, looking around my little room frantically in the dull red light. What the hell was I supposed to be doing? Why was this happening? What could I have possibly hit out in the middle of nothing?


    My eyes landed on the floating Neuro helmet slowly tumbling across the room, and I had a sudden and rather relieving thought.


    "Is the game still active?" I asked.


    "Yes, Grant. The game is still active." Came the cool feminine voice of Neuro.


    "Oh, thank the stars." I began to laugh in absolute relief. I had told Neuro I wanted a game that was basically my actual life, but far more exciting. The only problem is it seemed so perfectly reasonable that something would happen to the ship that I hadn''t made the connection that I just entered out of the loading screen. I got my breath under control and started to wonder what I should be doing. The Neuro helmet bounced off the ceiling and started its slow fall towards the far wall, and I hoped that the sudden disconnection, which was not supposed to be healthy for you in the real world, didn''t actually affect me in this game universe.


    I pulled my tablet out of my pocket, which was making frantic bipping noises and telling me that pretty much everything in the ship was powered down except the auxiliary units. In the real universe, that would have been absolutely terrifying, in here, it was kind of exciting.


    "Nero, can you lower the pain feedback by 25%?"


    "Pain feedback lowered by 25%."


    "Thank you."


    "You are welcome, Grant."


    I ran the mandatory gravity-out emergency drills once a month, so being alone in a dark ship with no down wasn''t a particularly novel experience, but I wasn''t exactly trained in zero-G. That said, I had played plenty of games, so while everything felt a little bit off from what I was used to, all I had to do was recalibrate my own mental process for moving around. I reached out and tapped the wall with one toe, sending me forward into my comfy chair. That gave me leverage to get myself worked around and aimed at the hatch to the cockpit. I slowly drifted through the hatchway and looked out into the deep dark.


    My breath caught in my throat as I saw the one thing I would have never expected; a ship, a very, very close ship. In space, everything is relative, and close was one of those things that was very relative. Unless entering or leaving some port, ships passing each other in the deep dark at about a kilometer apart was very close. With that sense of the word, the ship in front of me wasn''t close. It was practically docked. I could literally see the pilot on the other ship''s bridge. The other ship had an actual bridge. It was much bigger. Oddly enough, the other ship seemed to be sinking downward, which made me think my own ship gained a bit of a roll once it had apparently dropped out of the rift. The auxiliary power was enough to run the EMF drive, which likely was auto-correcting the ship''s tumble. The important part here is it meant that the inertial dampener buffers had been working. There was supposed to be enough charge to run the inertial dampeners between any type of power loss and the auxiliary power coming on. It was next to impossible to actually test if it was working, but the inertial dampeners functioning appropriately in a time like that was the difference between a bump on the head and turning into a human-shaped splatter on the bulkhead.


    The instruments on the cockpit¡¯s console told a slightly different story, though. The Flying Brick wasn''t rotating, it was stationary, which meant the other ship itself was sinking. They weren''t trying to dock. Why the hell would they not try to dock? It made no damn sense.


    Well, this was just a game. So, what do I want to do about it? I suppose I had a couple of options. They weren''t attempting to board the ship, so they might not actually be bad guys. That said, why the hell were they here? These people were literally right on top of me as I dropped out of the rift. They had to know I was going to be here. I could sit down and try to hail them on the coms channel, but then again, if they were bad, that might be a bad idea. I could suit up in the hard suit and go for a bit of a spacewalk and board their ship. That was absolutely insane. For the real world. Not a terrible idea for a game. Huh?


    I tried to come up with a couple of other ideas that were less, well, I guess stupid, but my mind had already been made up. This was just a game. If this was a game based on the real world, then I was going to go do the exciting thing. Suit up in a hard suit and spacewalk my way over and knock on the door. My little box was, in fact, not very big. So it took literally no time to drift my way over to the back wall, open up the cabinet, and pull out the hard suit. Getting into the thing in zero-G however, was a pain in the ass. It took entirely too long to get my legs into the correct holes, and getting the arms in was worse. Eventually, I was suited up with all the seals checked and all the suit''s functions reading green in the HUD. I made my way into the bow of the ship and cycled the lock.


    Never in my wildest dreams would I have considered strapping on a spacesuit and poking my head out the front door while not connected to an orbital. Floating in the vast nothingness, attached to the only ¡®something¡¯ in existence by a single handhold was so ridiculously surreal that it made my heart race. The other ship, dark from lack of any reasonable amount of light reflecting off of it, sat below mine, its bow pointed at the bottom of my cargo container full of lead. The running lights on the other ship were really the only illumination beyond the spotlight out front, a very odd sight. I gathered up my courage and searched for a couple of good handholds as I pushed myself outside the ship and tried to hand walk myself across the skin. It was considerably more pockmarked on this side than I would have thought. I suppose in a way, that made sense. The orbital skin always seemed a bit scratched and pockmarked, likely from the bajillion tiny specks of dust, some traveling far too fast.


    When I came to a spot where I could find no more handholds until I made it to the cargo container attached to my ship, I had to hesitate. The only idea going through my head at the moment was to push myself off the ship toward the cargo container and hope I found something I could grab ahold of, lest I drift away into the empty void. So that''s what I did. If this was the real universe, real life, it would be so incredibly stupid. If I, for any reason, missed my handhold or had miscalculated and pushed myself off a little too far, I would essentially just drift off into the empty, deep dark and wait until I ran out of air. The notion was ridiculous for real life, but this was the game. So if that did happen, I guess it would be a short game. I was still enjoying the scenario and was going to play it out as well as I could.


    I caught my handhold and scrambled down the side of the cargo container. When I peeked over the edge, I found two men, both attached to the ship, which hovered only a few meters away. They were carving away the metal hull of the cargo container. It was weird. I watched for a few minutes as one of the guys cut his way through into the container full of lead. Not exactly a profitable haul for pirates. Regardless of why they wanted the lead, they were still basically attacking my ship and cargo. So, bad guys, definitely.


    The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    I watched for a while before realizing they must be using some type of coms channel to talk on and thought I''d start sifting through the frequencies, maybe I''d get lucky. Chances are they were on some type of encrypted channel and I wouldn''t be able to hear it, but pretty much just as I was thinking that, the crackle of a voice came through.


    "I think I got it."


    Wow. I can''t believe they''re not on an encrypted channel even. I know that''s stupid.


    "Wait, hold on. Ok. Got it now."


    Presumably, the guy who was speaking was the guy cutting away the hull plates because shortly after that came over the radio, he pulled loose the large slab of metal and handed it off to his partner, who pushed it down and away from the ships. The guy with the cutter then stuck his head in the cargo container and started cutting away at something else. I''m not exactly sure what was in the cargo container. Theoretically, it''s just stuffed really full of cubes; basically polymer crates one meter by one meter cube, and locked together so they don''t move.


    I looked at the other ship. The only way to get over there was essentially to launch myself through the empty vast darkness and try to latch on. Another one of those dumb ideas that in real life was so incredibly stupid as to be mind-numbing, but this was a game. I calculated where I wanted to land and pushed myself off gently. As I slowly drifted through nothingness towards the other ship, I watched as the man with a torch pulled out, like I thought, a cube. He handed it off to the other guy who shoved it down away from the ships to follow the chunk of hull plate he had thrown earlier. That meant they didn''t want the lead. Lead was good at blocking scans. I wonder if there''s something else in there? As far as I knew, I was hauling a crate full of lead, but that would make it very easy for the AI to just throw in something vaguely radioactive. A good excuse as to why it wouldn''t show up on a scan on the other end of the system. Neuro is so clever.


    Watching the two men work, I wasn''t watching the incoming side of the ship. I impacted and bounced, which is a problem. Flailing around trying to get turned a bit so I can actually get a handhold of the ship. I only just managed to hook an antenna of some sort before drifting off into the nothingness. That would have been a good way to get a game over. Absolutely stupid. Still, I was now on the enemy ship. There''d be two ways in: the engineering hatch in the back of the ship, which was probably locked, and the docking port on the front of the ship, which had two guys right next to it, but most certainly open. I wonder if I should shoot them before I get into the lock or after. I made sure any lights in my helmet visor were off, which is something I should have done in the very beginning, but oops, and then started sneaking across the skin of the ship, gently drifting closer towards the open docking port. I inched my way closer as the two men dug their way deeper into the cargo container. One guy on the inside, cutting things loose and pulling them out. The other guy on the outside, shoving them downward, relatively speaking.


    I made sure to keep on the other side of the lock from the cockpit so I couldn''t be seen by the pilot and waited for my chance to throw myself into the open hatch. The guy on the outside sent a cube sailing downward towards all the others and when he turned back to the hole, I made my move, flipping around the open dock and into the actual lock. I was so close to the guy that it seemed unreasonable that he wouldn''t notice me. However, he would be staring through the visor of his helmet, which would narrow his vision, and the big part is there was no sound. There''s no way this move could have been done in atmosphere, but with nothing to transfer the sound from me touching and hitting the ship to the guy only a few meters away, he didn''t notice.


    ¡°Uh? Who''s using the lock?"


    Fuck! Of course, the guy in the cockpit would know that the lock was being cycled. I could see the guy on the outside of the ship look back through the little port window in the hatch, which had closed behind him. On the other side, some other guy looked through another window in the opposite hatch, he stuck his face right up to the glass and squinted. I pulled my Arc pistol, a small handheld weapon that shot a burst of energy and had a good chance of not killing anybody it hit because in the real world, I wasn''t particularly sure I could actually kill someone. However, in the game, I kind of wish I had stocked an actual pistol. I was gonna have to fist fight this guy to death. Well, that wasn''t particularly true. The arc pistol was lethal if you hit a person enough times with it.


    As the hatch cycled open, I leveled my pistol at the guy, a very confused-looking guy who had half a hard suit on, and blasted him in the chest. He went down with a scream.


    "All hands repel boarders, uh, repel boarders." Shouted somebody over the comms, both in my helmet and on the ship-wide.


    "What do you mean, Borders? Boarded by who?" Came another voice over the comms.


    I put two shots into the face of the guy on the deck, hopefully frying his brains or stopping his heart. Once I got past the lock, I realized my mistake in letting the lock shut. Now, the guys who were on the outside were starting to cycle the way on the inside, and I had to worry about the people who were still on the ship who knew I just entered. Shit.


    I walked forward out of the lock and into a large cargo area and heard rather than saw somebody above me on the metal grating. Pretty sure he leaned over the rails with a gun point down, but I was still technically underneath him and out of his sight, I could, however, see the bottom of his boots, through the little holes in the metal grating, and launched a couple of energy shots up at him. The ¡®blats¡¯ of my arch pistol dumped themselves into the floor, or my ceiling, or something, and he screamed and apparently fell on his ass. So I shot it again. In a way, the nice thing about energy shots is that it kind of went through certain things, though, to be fair, an actual lead thrower might have worked better. Not gonna complain as the idiot had dropped his gun, which clattered to the floor in front of me.


    I picked up my loot and launched another energy ¡®blat¡¯ up into the floor. As the guy was trying to get up, he screamed again, and I made my way far enough into the cargo bay to pull up his own pistol, a hefty little lead thrower, and fired at him when he actually got up, and then dropped the pistol back down to the lock which was cycling open, revealing the two guys who were outside and completely unarmed. I fired two shots into the first guy before realizing I had no idea what this lead thrower was shooting and I didn''t want to poke a hole in the damn ship.


    I brought the other gun up, letting a ¡®blat¡¯ off with the arc pistol and nailing the one I hadn''t just murdered. Once he went down, I walked up to him, put two more rounds in his head to fry his brains. Only then did I think about what I just did. Game or not. That was fucking cold. These guys were completely unarmed and I probably could have taken them prisoner or asked them questions or something other than just straight up murder hobo their asses. What does that say about me as a person? I looked down at the guys and felt kind of sick. This particular version of this game was so damn realistic. The scent was fucking horrible, but I guess that''s what I asked for.


    I crept up the ladder, which if you''re not aware is actually just a staircase. It''s not literally a ladder. It''s just called a ladder because it''s on a ship. I have no Star¡¯s damned idea why. Regardless, I climbed up the ladder and made sure that the previous guy whose gun I was now wielding was down. Now that I had a moment, I looked the pistol over and was both pleased and dismayed to know I only had four rounds. Pleased because there was this nice little indicator that told me and dismayed because I only had four. The guy on the ground didn''t seem to have a spare magazine beyond that. Beyond the guy was a small galley, a head, which was a bathroom on a ship by the way, and then an empty bridge. I turned back to the walkway that went around the cargo bay, which contained some large two part mechanism, and ducked around the hatch as a crack and a pop from down below, sent some type of frangible round skidding across my hard suit and spraying shrapnel down the passage. That was the benefit of wearing armor in a ship, though specifically, this hard suit was meant more for spacewalks, not necessarily gun fights. I tried to use the Arc pistol to keep them down while leveling the lead thrower at my now assailant. Sadly, it took two shots to get the guy, and I had to hit him with another two ¡®blats¡¯ from the Arc pistol to hopefully put him down. Not 100% sure that one''s dead, but I decided to keep on the upper level.


    I came across the first closed door, and by door, I mean an actual door, not a hatch that had any type of atmospheric sealing ability. This was literally just a door. I re-holstered my arc pistol and tried the knob. Of course, it was locked. So I pulled the Arc pistol back out and kicked the door in because, again, it was just a door, wasn''t even a particularly well-installed door. The thing banged open, and some girl screamed. I lifted both weapons and almost started pulling the trigger at the alien inside. Well, not really an alien, more like a demon. I''m assuming she had been in possession of a pistol because one clattered to the ground off to the side of a table, and she threw herself back against the cabinets. Apparently, I scared the shit out of her, and to be fair, she kind of scares the shit out of me.


    Her short black hair was the same color as the small horns protruding from her forehead. Her skin was crimson, and her eyes were a reddish-orange glowing color like embers. She wore a black leather collar, and a lab coat. I couldn''t see the rest of her because of the table.


    "What the fuck are you?" I yelled.


    "I''m just the medic!" She practically squealed, her arms up in the air, back pressed against the counters, and her head turned sideways as if that was gonna help her get further away.


    I had to pause for a moment and try to figure out what the fuck that meant. It took entirely far too long for me to realize she was talking about her job on the ship. Not exactly what she was. "I mean, what the fuck are you? Not your job."


    I''m from Zarin. It was settled by splicers.¡± She said, like that explained everything. Actually, it kind of did. I don''t know where the hell Zarin was, but if the place was settled by splicers, her looks made entirely more sense. Spicer was a generally derogatory term for somebody who went a little too far on gene therapy. For her to look the way she did, she either spent a small fortune on genetic therapies or her parents designed her before she came out of the womb. That''s just fucked up.


    "And you''re the medic on this ship?" I kept my tone a bit threatening as I moved off to the side to kick away her pistol.


    "Yeah."


    Once her Arc pistol was kicked back out towards the door, I moved backward while keeping my guns pointed in her direction, and just before leaving, made my first non-murder-hobo decision. "Fine, if you stay in here, you''ll be okay. Come out into the passage, and I''ll consider you a threat." With that, I shut the door, which did not latch into place appropriately. It took a bit of jiggling with it in order to get it back into its correct position. This room clearly did not exist previously, and whoever assembled it didn''t do a particularly great job.


    I snatched up the weird girl''s arc pistol and made my way down the passage. I pushed open the next hatch to find a bedroom. I''m assuming it was the captain''s quarters because the next room was essentially just a berthing area which was empty. I wonder how many more people were left on board this ship? I probably should have asked the girl, but I kinda didn''t feel like going back. Yeah, I didn''t shoot the girl, which technically made me sexist. On the other hand, I still kind of felt bad for shooting the guys in the lock. They probably would have surrendered, but I was kind of hyped up on adrenaline, and I had somebody coming around from the other side. Really, I''m just making up excuses, but starting to think maybe this whole thing is just a little too real. I''ll have to have Neuro back down on the graphics or something to make it a little more distant. Once I was done with this particular mission.


    I headed back down the passage towards the cockpit and double-checked that nobody had snuck up behind me before going down to the lower floor. There was a passage in the back of the cargo hold which headed aft, likely to engineering. There couldn''t be too many more places to hide. Theoretically, the only thing back there should be engineering. The passage very quickly dead-ended at a hatch. I threw the lever, which pulled back the dogs, and carefully opened the door, sticking my head and just one gun into the crack before entering the room. This was indeed engineering. It had literally everything mechanical. Several consoles, the Grav engine, a Rift drive, which is something I''d actually never seen in person, and of course, the power core along with all the environmentals. I took another few steps in before a sharp crack spun me around. Pain blasting through my left side. I turned towards the sound, pistols leveled, and fired both guns directly at the guy''s head, which was the only thing I could see around the Grav engine. Another sharp pop caught me in the arm as the click, click, click of the empty lead thrower in my hand came. I fired entirely too long. I was pretty sure I hit a moment or two ago, but I just kept blasting with the damn Arc pistol before eventually letting my arms fall, my breath coming heavy and pain radiating through my limbs. What the hell?


    I stumbled back into the passage outside of engineering, put my back to the wall, and slumped down. My arm hurt so fucking bad. I tried to reach up and pull off my helmet. The arm didn''t seem to function right. Eventually, I managed to get the latch loose and the helmet off and took a deep breath of the ship''s air not filtered through the hardsuit. God damn, this hurts.


    ¡°Neuro, lower the pain settings to 10%.¡± I waited far too long with no damn reply. ¡°Neuro. Hello?¡± That can''t be good. That really cannot be good. ¡°Neuro, end the game and let me out. I wanna go out.¡± I practically begged the AI with a horrible sinking feeling pressing deep into my gut. I remember very vividly asking her if the game was still active, and she said it was, but where was she now? Why was she not responding? Why am I still stuck in the game? Oh shit. Oh shit.


    I sat on the floor, my back against the bulkhead as I bled out into the hard suit. The sudden realization I had really fucked up. I had asked Neuro if the game was still active. I didn''t ask her if I was still in it, which likely meant all the fucking stupid shit I just did. All the people I just blatantly murdered¡­


    ¡°Neuro? Neuro¡± I begged for her, but she never responded.


    ***


    ¡°What is your name?¡± Neuro asked.


    ¡°Grant Takata.¡± I replied while trying very hard not to giggle. The world in front of me was so bright and white that I felt like it should hurt my eyes, but I couldn''t actually focus on why it didn''t. I think it was in character creation because I couldn''t really feel anything, and Neuro is talking to me again, which was a considerable relief.


    ¡°Why are you here?¡± Neuro asked again, though there was considerably more inflection in her voice than usual. I couldn''t quite place why.


    ¡°Because I''m bored. Duh.¡± What kind of weird-ass question was that? ¡°I need to know what the game we are playing before I can make up some kind of character backstory. Everything''s so fuzzy right now.¡±


    ¡°Game? What game?¡± That was weird. She sounded rather angry.


    I tried to shrug but I don''t actually know if my arms moved or if I have arms or if arms are useful. ¡°I don''t know. You tell me.¡±


    ¡°This isn''t a fucking game!¡±


    That didn''t sound at all like Nero. What the hell?


    ¡°I don''t get it. Is this not character creation?¡± I asked because honestly I''m a little confused now.


    ¡°Character? What the fuck are you talking about?¡± The feminine voice seemed considerably more stressed and definitely not the same pitch as Neuro. That said, I was kind of having a hard time caring for some reason.


    ¡°Ok, let''s start over. You said your name was Grant, right?¡±


    ¡°Yeah, that''s me.¡± I sing-songed.


    ¡°Ok, Grant. What do you remember?¡±


    ¡°You''re gonna have to be a little more specific. Are we starting with my childhood or what? Where the hell is this going?¡±


    ¡°When your ship fell out of the Rift?¡±


    ¡°Oh, so like, you wanna recap of the game so far?¡± I asked, trying to get clarification on what the hell she wanted. I''m assuming this was some type of character Neuro created for some reason.


    ¡°Sure. Let''s do that. A recap of the game. Start from the beginning.¡±


    I had to think about that for a second. Everything was so fuzzy, and I felt so great, but I still couldn''t move. So that''s a little weird. The beginning started with the game. I was bored. ¡°Well, I put on the helmet and I walked around, I sat down, and I talked to you, and you said, ¡®Yeah, could you help?¡¯ And I said, ¡®Well, let''s give it a try.¡¯ I wanted a game that was basically real life with more action and shit. So I guess that''s the start. As far as a recap, I guess. I, um, as soon as the loading screen opened, I was thrown against the wall and the gravity cut out, which was freaky because I didn''t know if it was real or a game. At that point, I asked you if the game was still running, you said ¡®yes,¡¯ I asked you to lower the pain threshold, you said, ¡®Okay,¡¯ and then I got to work trying to figure out what was going on. There was a ship.¡± I thought about that ship floating out there in the black. ¡°It was so surreal and so freaking weird to have something like that happen in the middle of the deep dark. It was so great. I wasn''t in the rift anymore. I assume they were the bad guys. So I went and got the hard suit and went outside. Never go outside like that in real life. Stupid, stupid, stupid idea.¡± I giggled. ¡°Anyway, these pirate people were cutting into my cargo hold to get the lead out or something. I''m assuming you put something in there that wasn¡¯t lead. That would make more sense. Where was I? Oh, right. Then I got inside of the thing. People were like, ¡®hey, who''s in the lock?¡¯ The locked door opened. I shot a guy, walked in further, the lock door closed. And I shot another guy who was on the catwalk, his gun fell down. So I got that and then I shot another guy. Oh, yeah, they both came through the lock and that was, yeah, I don''t know if I, hmm. Yeah.¡± I kind of petered out at that moment. I still feel kind of bad about shooting them.


    ¡°Yeah, I feel kind of bad about shooting the guys in the lock, but I''m not sure I would know what to do with them. Anyway, I went upstairs, didn''t immediately find anybody. Then somebody started shooting at me from the lower deck on the other side of the cargo bay. Then I walked around, I kicked in the door with a demon chick of some sort. Yeah, I left her alive. I know that makes me sexist.¡± I paused for a while thinking about that. Should I have shot her? Just to be fair? No, I should have kept other people alive to be fair. I''m kind of horrible in games. ¡°Then I searched the upper deck a little bit and I walked down into the engineering bay and somebody shot at me and I shot at him and I think he hit me and I¡­ I, ah¡­¡±


    Okay. What the fuck? I swear. I remember lying on the floor bleeding. Am I dead? And then there was Neuro or there wasn''t Neuro.


    ¡°And then I was telling Neuro to turn off the game or reduce the pain and she didn''t answer.¡±


    I pulled myself out of my own holy shit moment and tried to figure out where the other person was. Somewhere in the deep distance was a small voice whimpering a mantra of "Holy shit, holy shit." Honestly, I kind of had to agree with her, and if she wasn''t Neuro and if this whole thing happened to be real or I suppose even if we were in the game and it wasn''t Neuro, that meant she was the demon lady or more accurately, the splicer, the doctor or  medic. Which meant I was probably drugged. It is so weird to realize something so terrible and wanna giggle. I swear. I spent a long time just trying to get the giggles under control. This was not funny. I''ve decided right here and right now I don''t like drugs. I don''t know where the girl went, but the ceiling is starting to resolve itself into an actual light and I probably shouldn''t be holding my eyes open while staring at it like this. That said, I literally just murdered several people and now was giggling about it. The light''s not really a problem. At some point, the girl must have come back because she asked me a new question which brings on a whole new level of horror when you get deep down into the mechanics of it.


    ¡°Can you fly a ship?¡±


    ¡°Yes.¡± I answered because I did know how to fly a ship. ¡°But¡­¡± And this was a very big but. ¡°We¡¯re in the middle of the deep dark and I don''t know how the fuck a Rift-Drive works.¡± I heard the woman swear if she was asking me this question because she also didn''t know how the Rift Drive worked or even how to fly the ship, and everybody but me and her were dead. Seriously. What the fuck did I do?

 02: What’s in the Box 1

    It didn''t take long to figure out how the Rift Drive worked, much to my relief. Turns out the flight plan was already in the ship¡¯s systems, and all I had to do was literally point the ship in the correct direction, go the correct speed, and push the correct button.


    "What about the Flying Brick?" I asked, slowly turning in my chair to look at the demon splicer medic girl sitting at a console behind me, still holding a gun in my direction.


    "The what?"


    "My ship," I clarified.


    "Does your ship have a Rift Drive?"


    "No."


    "Then forget about it for now. You can come back for it later depending on what happens when we arrive."


    I turned my gaze out the port window. With a heavy sigh, I located and activated the EMF Drive and slowly backed away from the Flying Brick. At a safe distance, I spun the ship 180 and activated the Grav Drive at 0.1 Grav. Part of my heart seemed to break as my home, workplace, and ship fell away from the port windows. I wondered if I''d ever actually see my little ship again. Correcting course and slowly increasing the Gravs on the forward momentum, I watched our velocity tick up as the number for the needed momentum on the Rift Drive ticked down. It was a long two or three minute wait as we gained enough forward velocity, all while I considered the woman behind me, and more specifically, the pistol in her hand. My only saving grace was that she apparently had no idea how to fly this thing, and until we were docked at a station, she needed me.


    On the correct course and at the correct velocity, I pushed the button to activate the Rift Drive. The numbers cycle on the screen, displaying a massive surge in power which I couldn¡¯t feel or sense in any meaningful way. Out the front ports, a small pinpoint of green light blossomed into an uneven hole into the secondary side space that they traveled through. It was so weird. The gateways that various systems controlled for shipping traffic, like my Flying Brick, had a nice solid structure around where the rift was placed, making the whole thing look rather natural. This was literally a rift in space, and how the hell this ship managed to tear a hole way out there was far beyond me. Regardless of whether I liked it or not, the ship I was currently on slid into the green pulsating embrace and closed behind us.


    "Okay. We''re on course," I said to the girl behind me without looking back.


    "Good, get up now."


    Originally, I thought the girl was letting me use the bathroom. It took some odd sounds and about three minutes of thinking about it before I realized I had been locked in it. I supposed this is the best she could do for a prison cell. There was always the captain''s quarters, but that had terminals that I might be able to get into. Being locked in the head wasn''t exactly pleasant, but it was fairly clean, and I had a place to sit.


    ***


    The station was in control of the ship via the docking computer. I felt the familiar thud of the lock latching on, connecting ship to station, and my eyes moved from the screen that held the locking information which went green, down to the station information screen which wanted to know who was paying the docking fees.


    I turned my head to look over my shoulder at the red-skinned woman behind me, still with her pistol pointed at my head. "Who''s paying for this?"


    Her hard expression changed slightly, muting just a bit and flowing into one of subtle surprise, like it had never occurred to her that docking fees were a thing. Her lips parted ever so slightly, and the gun drooped a bit as she very intelligently said, "Uhhh?¡±


    I shook my head and shrugged before entering my own information. By my guess, she was either going to kill me or, more likely, turn me over to the station authorities. What was a small drop in my account balance to the stars only knew how many years in prison. Once finished, I continued staring at the computer while saying, "OK. How are we gonna do this?" I waited for a good solid while, hearing no reply, before I turned to look at the girl. The splicer''s expression was stuck showing some form of indecision, mild panic, and utter bewilderment. I noticed that the gun was shaking slightly, which certainly didn''t comfort me. "Do you want me to call the authorities and turn myself in?" I asked as deadpan as I could. I really didn''t want to provoke the girl into shooting me, and I didn''t really see any other way I was gonna get out of this.


    Her sudden and immediate response made him jump slightly. "No!"


    Well, that pretty much just confirmed what I had already thought. "This is a pirate ship, isn''t it?"


    The splicer gave me a look that said she thought I was stupid and more calmly replied, "No."


    "So you guys knock a ship incapable of opening a Rift out of one of the shipping lanes, cut open into its cargo bay, and you''re claiming to not be pirates. Also, you suddenly seem very hesitant to have port authorities on board."


    "That''s not it. It''s not like that," she said defensively, still with the gun pointed at me though she actually sounded a bit unsure.


    "Uh huh," I shifted in my seat. "So how are we doing this?"


    She looked away, I lunged for the gun when she looked away.


    I had played a lot of video games using the Neuro helmet. Combat in video games was very similar to real life depending on the settings. While I certainly didn''t have the built-up muscle memory required to correctly disarm someone, I was reasonably sure of what I was doing. My left hand went for the gun while my right hand went for her wrist, a pushing and pulling motion causing her to scream out as her finger was overextended in the trigger guard. Unfortunately, as I had never done this in actual real life, I was pretty sure I had failed to break her finger, and she retaliated with a swipe of her fingernails towards my face, using her other hand to go after the gun. Said gun flopped around in between our fingers for a few moments before tumbling off to the side, hitting the floor, and bouncing underneath the console. Both I and the splicer woman looked from the console to each other. I dove for the gun and the splicer girl dove for the door. By the time I had managed to snatch the weapon and bring it up, the door of the bridge had been shut, and I could hear the splicer''s pounding feet hauling ass down the passage.


    That was fine with me. I walked up to the door and locked it. With the splicer girl no longer on the bridge with me and the door locked, I returned to the console and started searching around to see if the ship had any interior cameras. It didn''t take too long before I found them. And there were a lot of them. Even the bathrooms had cameras, leaving literally no privacy. The girl holed herself back up in her little medical lab, hiding behind the desk with what looked like a shotgun pointed towards the door. I honestly couldn''t blame the woman. I had come in, murdered everybody, and then she had to keep me alive because she had no idea how to fly this thing. Furthermore, there was something clearly wrong as she seemed to be extraordinarily hesitant to phone up the authorities and hand me over to the station security for murder, and yet she claimed that this was not a pirate vessel. The ship and crew had certainly been acting like pirates.


    With some solid time on my hands, I looked over the ship''s systems and wondered what I was supposed to do now. The part of me that said I should do the right thing wanted to phone up the authorities, turn myself in, and quite probably turn the girl in. The part that didn''t want to go to prison for the rest of my life was scrambling to find some way out of it. Actually, there might be something to that. I pulled up the crew roster, which despite the eight people that had been on board when they had attacked my ship, there were only three listings. I cross-referenced them with the station systems only to find that the captain and first mate were in reasonably decent standing. They both had a warrant for their arrest in the same system for assault. There was a reasonably large amount of other systems that they had warrants, more specifically in various stations, mostly drunk and disorderly, battery, aggravated assault, and a couple accounts of theft. The captain and first mate seemed like they were probably good friends and got into a lot of bar fights.


    The engineer, on the other hand, was a slightly different story. The guy had a 2000 credit bounty in three different systems with crimes including manslaughter, sexual assault, grand theft, and embezzlement. Too bad the guy needed to be alive to collect, but that certainly made me wonder what was up with the other four crew members that weren''t listed in the ship''s roster. Well, five crew members; the splicer girl wasn''t listed either. While I had no idea what her name was, sticking her physical description through the filters on the station net, pretty quickly narrowed it down. Though I was rather surprised to find that there were a whole seven people who were wanted and who were female with horns and red skin. Their wanted posters ranged from literally all over the human diaspora, and it was pretty easy to pick out my specific splicer girl.


    Samantha Draken, had a 25,000 credit bounty on her head if brought in alive and 10,000 brought in dead. There was a palpable feeling of unease as I looked through the list of her alleged crimes: torture, human experimentation, assault, theft, corporate espionage, more accounts of torture and human experimentation, and the last one being breach of an indentured contract. Story of the medic chick holed up in the medical closet of the ship, if read in chronological order, was that she was some type of indentured servant who ran away and then started experimenting on people with the stars only knew what. The image of the woman told by the screen in front of me didn''t exactly match what I had come to think of her as. While she was a bit odd, I had mostly seen her as a scared girl just trying to keep her shit together and survive long enough to reach something other than the cold, hard, certain death of the void. Now, I sat with an uneasy feeling as my eyes returned to the camera to verify that she was still posted in that little medical room with a shotgun pointed at the door. She seemed to be waiting for me to walk in and murder her.


    I let out a long sigh as I wondered what the hell was up with this shit. With everything gathered so far, I might get away with only a year or two in prison, especially if the other dead members of the crew had bounties on their heads. I sat back in my seat and rubbed my temples, my frustration and indecision interrupted by an audio-only comm.


    "This is Grant of the Res-a-tesseract" I didn''t really actually know how to pronounce the unpronounceable name, but I figured as long as I said it the same time every time and I acted like that''s how it was pronounced, then I could pretty well fake it until I made it. I initially wasn''t going to take the audio call, but the fact that it came up as encrypted had piqued my interest and made me wonder if whoever was on the other side of the line was the person that had hired the crew of this ship to go hijack my ship or, more specifically, disable it, leave it floating in the dark, and pull something out of cargo.


    "Please get the captain for me," came the voice from the other end of the call. It was male and professional sounding. I considered my options for response.


    ¡°I''m afraid there was an issue with our last trip. The captain''s dead. You''re pretty much stuck with me. Would I be correct in assuming you''re expecting delivery of something?¡±


    I was trying to keep the same professional tone. I was already in pretty deep shit and I figured the guy on the other end couldn''t make things any worse.


    ¡°Yes. Did your vessel complete its mission before you lost your captain?¡±


    ¡°Afraid not. Unfortunately, I wasn¡¯t privy to the details of the mission and therefore could not carry it out.¡±


    ¡°Be advised. I''m going to send you new docking coordinates so we can remove our equipment from your hold. I also require your flight records.¡±


    I hesitated, quickly moving to another screen. I acknowledged the station''s offer to top up the tankage of needed gasses and water. It was gonna cost me more money for a ship I didn''t own, but it would give me time.


    ¡°The ship is currently refilling tankage. ETA is 23 minutes.¡± I replied, hoping that would indeed buy me time to think. How was I gonna get this guy to at the very least not kill me? Assuming I was working with some type of crime boss or mafia or who the hell knew who they were.


    ¡°Understood, sending information for our docks now.¡±


    I saw the information pop up on my screen and after a moment of hesitation, relaxed myself so I didn''t sound nervous and asked a question. ¡°I do know where the ship is. Could you forward me the mission objectives? Perhaps I can complete them for you.¡±


    There was a rather long pause where I had to stare at the screen for well over a minute before a new data file hit. I quickly opened it and started reading. My eyes widened as I noticed the 100,000 credit reward for completing this reasonably simple mission. The crew of this ship was essentially supposed to fly out to the middle of the deep dark along one of the shipping lanes. I didn''t really understand the technicalities of how the Rift Interdiction System worked, which was the giant thing in the cargo bay, and I didn''t really need to know how it worked as my ship had already been pulled out of the Rift. Point was the crew of the ship had enough clout to borrow an Interdiction System to pull my ship out, which had been noted as a drone ship. This, so far, was the largest error in the whole plot. They were then supposed to pull out a specific package buried in the cubes of lead and return it to the station at a specific docking arm. I was very clearly at the wrong docking arm, which was fine by me, but the fact that the guy had shared this information without knowing anything about who he was sharing it with gave me a horrible sinking feeling. I¡¯d watched enough vids and played enough games to know that there was no way that the guy on the other end of this line was gonna keep me alive. I was now in possession of illegal evidence which I could hold or share with station authorities in an attempt to improve my position.


    Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    Then again, the guy on the other end of the line clearly wanted his Interdiction System back because that was probably a several hundred thousand credit piece of technology and he was also gonna want the information logged into the computers. Point being, when I docked at the correct docking station, they were going to invade the ship, kill me, likely the girl, Samantha, and commandeer the ship. Once they cleaned up, they could likely hand the ship and the bodies that were probably stored somewhere on the ship unless Samantha had just spaced them and claimed that the vessel they were working with had been hijacked. Win-win for everybody except me. The shit I was in had indeed gotten deeper.


    "So I''m to understand that it is 100,000 credits to retrieve a box for you?"


    It took an exceedingly long time for the response to come. "That is correct."


    "And I must very much not look in the box. Correct?"


    "That is also correct."


    "Well, then I am very much interested in undocking from the station and going to get that specific box," I told the guy on the other end of the comms, trying to weasel my way out of docking at the other arm and being murdered.


    "While I applaud your enthusiasm, you can certainly understand why we would want our Interdiction System returned."


    "Yes, that does make sense. Can I ask who I''m speaking to?"


    "Unfortunately, I am merely a broker for various clients, and there is a certain amount of relationship that has to be built up in these things before we start talking about names."


    I took a quick glance to make sure that Samantha was still holed up in her little medical room and that the tank had not yet been close enough to full for me to actually have to worry about leaving. My best option for life was probably to disengage from the station and leave. I could either head off in some random direction while squirting the information for where to find the Flying Brick out just before I left, along with the insurance claim I still had to make, or I could just straight up not tell them, though I¡¯d likely be hunted for the rest of my life by various governments and whatever criminal organization I would piss off. Somehow getting them back their Interdiction System would theoretically increase my chances of living, but how to do that without opening myself up to being murdered? I sat back and considered my options and decided to just level with the guy.


    ¡°All right. I''m gonna be honest here. I''m kind of in some deep shit. I don''t know you, and I don''t trust you. The reason the captain is dead is because that ship you sent them after wasn''t a drone. It was my ship and I''m a little pissed about it. Most specifically, the part where they were gonna leave me sitting out in the middle of the deep dark to slowly suffocate and or starve. It sounds like my best option for survival is to simply break away from the station and make a run for it. That really just leaves me in some deeper shit though. So I guess my question is if there is a way I can get you back your Interdiction System and get this box for you? Is there some way I can end up leaving with my name free and clear from piracy caused by defending myself?


    I waited for quite a while for the reply. While I was about 100% certain that this broker person was somewhere on the station, I felt like I was having a conversation that easily over an AU. I practically jumped when the reply did come.


    "Do I understand this correctly? The ship known as the Flying Brick was not a drone, but a single person crewed vessel? Yours? And you managed to eliminate the crew of the vessel that pulled you out of Rift space? You wish to complete the job that the crew of the Res-a-tesseract had taken in exchange for the ship and having your name cleared of any forms of piracy? Is that correct?"


    I hadn''t actually thought about taking the ship, but why not? "Yeah, that''s about it."


    "That does sound reasonable. I do require some assurances. Firstly, we want the Interdiction System returned. Secondly, we would like the Flying Brick''s coordinates so that I can send someone to complete the mission, if you do not, the various legal expenses to accomplish your request will also be removed from the mission''s payout."


    "That does sound reasonable to me though I refuse to give up the Flying Brick''s coordinates until I am detached from the station and on a route, you know, because of trust issues."


    "And I would very much like access to your ship''s coordinates before you detach from the station. Because you know, trust issues."


    Well, the guy kind of had me there. "Ok. But again, with the trust issues when we dock, I don''t wanna see a group of gunmen enter the cargo hold and start spreading out across the ship. If that happens, I''m venting the atmosphere and I very much wanna be disconnected before giving you telemetry on the Flying Brick."


    "I think we can see to it. Any other demands?"


    I didn''t like that. He had kind of just flipped his stance on getting the coordinates for the Flying Brick and I had no idea why. A quick glance at the small medical room showed that Samantha hadn''t moved, so she wasn''t feeding them any information. I also didn''t think she knew how to feed the guys any information. I stared at Samantha for another moment before realizing I was going to have to bring up that.


    "There is another armed person on this ship, a member of the former crew. Right now, they are currently armed and holed up. I''m gonna take the rest of the time that we are working on tankage to try to diffuse that situation," he said.


    "That would be advisable. Keep in mind, hostile action taken against my men will be met with deadly retaliation."


    That was the first time the guy on the other end of the line had threatened me. Though to be fair, he had basically said, you shoot at us, we''re gonna shoot back, which at the current moment was my stance on things. I made sure the communication channel with the broker was muted before changing my attention to Samantha Draken. How the hell did I wanna handle this?


    I pushed down the intercom button and started speaking. "Samantha Draken." The girl on screen jumped slightly and adjusted her grip on the shotgun, still aimed at the door. "You can put the gun down. I locked myself in the bridge." That certainly got her attention. I was pretty sure she knew where the speaker system was, but judging by the way she was looking around, I was fairly certain she had no idea there was a camera in there.


    "I found your file. You know, you''re worth 25,000 credits alive. Torture, human experimentation. I mean, holy shit. You seemed worried about me killing you, but at this point, I''m far more concerned for my own life." I tried to watch if her expression changed, but with the angle of the camera, I couldn¡¯t tell. "Give me one reason why I shouldn''t just have the station authorities come in here and take control of things. Yeah, I might have killed everybody but, uh, literally everybody in the ship had a warrant. Though to be fair, nobody has a bounty higher than yours."


    That was creative license. I had no idea about the other four guys I had killed and the captain and first mate weren''t in the sort of trouble that would get them canned on any random station. Specifically not this one. To my surprise, the demon-looking splicer girl on the camera set the shotgun down and curled up, wrapping her arms around her legs and burying her face in her knees, a position in which I assumed she was crying, though I couldn''t be sure. One major point was that she wasn''t trying to deny it. I gave her a few minutes to mope before speaking again.


    "The guy who sent you people to attack my ship just called.¡± I waited to see if I had her attention and continued when her head poked back up. "He wants whatever you were trying to take off my ship. I''m seriously considering finishing this job for him and as an act of goodwill, I might be handing you over so they can collect the bounty," I said. The idea had only just hit me as something I could do to further increase my odds. The problem was that while the girl had kept me at gunpoint all week and locked in a bathroom, she still kept me fed and otherwise just seemed like a scared girl. She didn''t really seem to fit the psycho that the wanted posters made her out to be. That didn''t mean she wasn''t though. There really wasn''t much of a way for me to tell. I wanted to hear it from her. If she could give me just one good reason not to believe the wanted poster.


    "So what you got, nothing? Not a single reason why I should risk my neck with you instead of some random mafia or crime boss or whatever the hell these people are?," I asked.


    Samantha took some time to wipe her eyes. She slowly got up and made her way towards what I assumed was the comms button. She made like she was gonna push it, but paused to wipe her eyes some more. She then turned around, found something to blow her nose with and then returned to what was probably the comms button. When she finally did press the button, her answer was nine words long.


    "I didn''t know that they were people at first."


    What the hell was that supposed to mean? I tried to figure out how to reask that particular question in a way that seemed a little less, ¡®I think you''re full of bullshit¡¯. "Please explain that more?" I asked.


    "I was indentured to a pharmaceutical company outside of Seriph. I was tasked with making various genetic modifications for primates for all sorts of reasons. I worked there for two years before I was given a sample to test. In order to be thorough, I got a full sequencing of the genome and that''s when I realized the primates were human. Then I ran away."


    Well, that was kind of horrifying. That didn''t mean that she was telling the truth, but breach of an indentured contract was one of her supposed crimes. The way it was listed, that was the first crime.


    "You realize all that shit is listed after you ran away?" I asked.


    "The charges are, I ratted the company out," Samantha replied.


    I supposed that made a reasonable amount of sense. So the question was, could I trust her? The answer is probably no.


    "Well, here''s your options. Go lock yourself in the back room, uh, I guess the same bathroom you''ve been locking me in, with no guns, and I won''t inform the people coming aboard to take their Interdiction System that you exist. We''ll hash everything else out when we''re back in the black, or I turn you in now," I offered.


    I waited for her to make her decision. She turned and stared down at the shotgun she had left on the floor. "I¡¯ll go hide in the bathroom," Samantha said dejectedly before she left the room. I was able to track her progress on the cameras. There were a lot of cameras in here. I watched her enter the bathroom, close the door and sit down on the toilet. With that deescalation complete, I contacted the broker and told him that the situation had been diffused and that I still had three more minutes before the tanks were topped.


    With a momentary thought that this ship might actually end up mine provided things actually went well and I didn''t end up dead, I tried to familiarize myself with some of the systems. A couple of things of note was that there was a large data dump of information that entered into the buffers, but then that went out to several other devices. Considering that most of the crew was dead, I''d have to either find those devices and deactivate them or find some other way to clean up the ship''s internal systems. With nothing else to do when I got back out into the deep dark, I found myself some manuals on how to work with the systems and set them to download as I made my request to be moved to a different docking arm. The cool automated voice of the station¡¯s system took control of the docking computer along with its warning about how it was a felony to wrest control away and break off. The ship with a nearly unpronounceable name backed away from the station in such a way that made it look like the station was leaving the ship, which was fairly normal for any type of disembarking. Then the ship went straight up relative to the ship, and technically the station as the docking computer had originally oriented the two so that the artificial gravities matched. After a while of up and moving to the left until the station disappeared off the side of the viewport, there was some changing of orientation before closing in on a different docking arm. All standard stuff, though in the Flying Brick, I had never had to move to different docking stations. My cargo was attached and detached from the outside.


    In an attempted show of goodwill, I sent the broker the camera feeds for the passages leading into the cargo bay. I was a little unhappy to see armed men in hard suits take up stations on either side of the cargo bay entrance, but as the next people that came in were technicians and people operating pallet jacks, I figured I¡¯d let it go because who wants to walk into a hostile ship? For some reason, the broker was keeping his word and not raiding the ship. Then again, he might just be waiting for the Interdiction System to be pulled out so that the valuable system wasn''t damaged in the crossfire. It took a good 15 minutes for the technicians to disconnect everything, dismount the machines, and start hauling them out in large pieces. The system itself would never fit in the Flying Brick. Then again, the entire crew quarters of the Flying Brick was equivalent to the bridge and the galley of this ship with its difficult to pronounce name. I practically jumped when the voice came over his comm system again.


    "Now that we have our equipment, feel free to disembark."


    Stars knew there had to be some reason the broker seemed to be just letting me go. Had I missed them planting a bomb or something? I still hadn''t given the guy the data and it just didn''t feel right that he''d be okay with me leaving before giving up the information. With the people off the ship and all the tanks full, I requested permission to leave and was slightly surprised when the station systems took control and gently eased me away from the station. Again, the station drifted away until the Res-a-tesseract hit the safety line and control was once again in my hands. I turned the ship around and started to burn in a direction that wasn''t quite the way I had to go.


    "It would seem my end of the deal is done. You are free from the station. Please forward the telemetry for the Flying Brick," I mulled over his response before replying.


    "I said I would give you the information before disembarking. And by that, I meant before I entered the Rift. While we''re still in the system, I need to file my insurance claim reports. So I expect it to be a while before I actually send you the data."


    "And when do you expect to disembark?" came the slightly annoyed voice of the broker, which was the first time I had noted any emotion in said voice.


    "Well, if I were in your position, I''d have a gunship ready and waiting. So that as soon as I squirted you the telemetry, you''d send it off to them and then they could meet me if not, beat me, to the Flying Brick. Then they could utterly destroy me, completely wiping your hands of my existence. I figured I''d get out far enough so that the communications delay would be about six hours. Unfortunately, that should take about seven days. Sorry about that. It''s just trust issues, you know?"


    "Very well," came the now very clearly annoyed voice of the broker several minutes later. I kept an eye on the scanners to make sure I wasn''t being hunted down while still in the system. I really did hope I¡¯d make it out of this. A quick glance to one of the camera screens showed my other problem still sitting in the bathroom.


    ***


    The broker leaned back in his chair while examining the data being streamed from the Res-a-tesseract to his console. This new person was being extraordinarily cautious and was clearly someone who had watched too many entertainment vids, but at the same time, that cautiousness could be useful. He reached over to his other console and contacted the waiting ship to inform them that they would need to wait six or so days for the Res-a-tesseract to actually leave. They already had the coordinates, but the broker wanted to give this Grant character the feeling that he had been clever enough to outsmart him. With one reliable crew dead, the broker wanted to know if this new person, this new commander of the Res-a-tesseract, could be useful in the future. There was no time limit on the delivery and the fact that it had already missed its arrival to its intended destination was already a win. The broker spent a few more minutes staring over the system information before filing it off to the side and working on the next project.

 03: What’s in the Box 2

    With nothing but the calming view of empty blackness filled with pinpricks of light through the forward viewport, I finally relaxed into my seat. The orbital was falling far behind me, and the short-range scanners weren''t picking up anything heading in my direction. With all the nerve-wracking stuff behind me, my first thought was getting some food, preferably something sweet, maybe chocolate or something, but as I thought about getting up and walking out to the galley, I remembered that I still had a demon-looking splicer girl who had spent the last week pretty much pointing a gun at my head.


    A quick look at the camera feed showed she was still sitting in the head, practically in the same spot she had sat down hours ago. It made me realize I needed to visit the head myself. Thankfully, there were two on the ship. As long as I was quick and quiet about it, I could probably get in and out and lock myself back in the bridge long before she noticed. Fortunately, I found myself correct in that assumption and while I could probably find something to eat, she wasn''t actually that far down the hallway and might hear me slamming cabinet doors as I had no idea where anything was stored, or even what was stored. Probably should have taken inventory, but the ship was probably stocked for eight people to come back this way and I doubt the two mouths that were fed had really eaten up much of the stock. There was more food in the Flying Brick that I could pilfer when I got the rest of my stuff. However, it''d be a good six or seven days before I actually activated the Rift Drive, which is something I should probably figure out how to work, followed by like another four days in the Rift itself. Then I''d probably have about six hours to approach the Flying Brick, grab my stuff, and search the cargo hold for whatever box I''m supposed to be getting. All that meant about 10 days before I even got to the Flying Brick where I had to deal with my other problem.


    I couldn''t exactly be sure how much of a problem Samantha was. I had clearly been hit in the firefight between me and the crew, but she had patched me up well enough that I had pretty much healed already with a slight exception of general soreness in my arm and side, which was not as bad as it was yesterday. I really didn''t want to keep her locked in the bathroom like she had done to me. It seemed like a lot of extra work. but what to do with her. We were going to have to work something out. She clearly didn''t know how to work the ship and therefore was pretty much useless in that aspect, but I also didn''t want to space her. I already felt bad for murdering her entire crew despite the fact that they had technically pulled me out of the Rift so they could loot my cargo hold. A certain amount of retaliation was justified. The excessive retaliation wasn''t. I still felt really bad for gunning down the two guys in the lock and I still felt weird by the fact that they were actual people. I watched Samantha sit on the head for another minute or two before reaching for the comms button with a long sigh.


    ¡°Samantha, I think you can leave the head and make your way to the nearest comms. We need to have a chat," I said over the shipwide. Why? Because there were no comms inside the bathrooms, at least as far as I knew. I watched as Samantha slowly got up, stretched, made her way to the door, and seemed to be surprised that it opened. She couldn''t actually lock herself inside without me pushing something in front of the door to keep her in. I figured she would have heard that, or not hear it, technically. Oh, well. I flipped to the next room''s camera and watched as she made her way to the comm box where she paused and pretty much just stared at it. In some ways, I found it interesting that the comms on most ships were essentially a box that had actual buttons and actual wires that ran to an actual switchboard. Really it was one of those redundant systems that are supposed to continue working on emergency power and I guess sometimes the old tech was better in such situations. Samantha finally pressed the button.


    "What?" Came the single-word question that was to be the start of our new relationship. One that would likely end badly.


    "You and I are gonna spend the next 10 days heading back to the middle of nowhere. Unless you want me to drop you off at a station, we should probably work out some sort of truce."


    It looked like she was just staring at the box. The cameras weren''t placed at the greatest of angles and there was a high probability that that was exactly what she was doing.


    "What kind of truce?"


    "Preferably the kind where we don''t shoot at each other, or lock each other in the head, or space each other, or experiment on each other."


    Again, she stared at the box while I stared at the back of her left shoulder. It was at this particular moment I realized she had a tail, and the thing must have been prehensile because it was moving around quite a bit. Seriously. What kind of parents would design their child to look like a demon? A succubus specifically. Freaking weirdos.


    "So if I promise not to experiment on you, you''ll promise not to murder me?" The inflection in her voice said she didn''t trust me at all and that she wasn''t happy here.


    "I''d be perfectly willing to drop you off on a station somewhere."


    "I can''t do that."


    I knew my next comment was gonna poke the bear a bit more, but I kind of had to know if my assumption was right. "So in an attempt to avoid prison, you''ve basically made the ship your prison. Is that right?" Samantha looked like she was gonna jab the button and yell back, but instead just hovered with her finger next to the button for several ticks. "Yeah, that''s it," she started, some heat in her voice. "You had a problem with that? Maybe you should stop at the station and you should get off."


    "Would you actually like me to do that?"


    Again, she made like she was gonna jab the button, but froze. Clearly, it dawned on her that if I got off the ship, she''d still be on the ship and she had no idea how to fly the damn thing. This was an awkward situation for the both of us. I watched her shoulders slump and she turned around, put her back to the wall, and slid to the floor. I let her sit like that for a while.


    ¡°I''m sorry for murdering your crew. I really did think I was in a game and to be fair, they attacked me first or at least they attacked my ship," I said. She didn''t make a move to respond. ¡°Have you been flying with them long?¡± That''s what you were supposed to do. Ask them questions, get to know them, be somewhat personal with the other people. Actually that was probably for a hostage situation, I think. I¡¯m really not qualified for this shit.


    "Two years," Samantha said, startling me from my thoughts. "Well, for two of them. Four of the guys were new. They were only here for a few trips. The engineer has only been with us for a couple of months and honestly, he''s a fucking creepy dick."


    "So you only liked two of them?"


    " We had a working agreement."


    If I understood the words and tone of voice correctly, she wasn''t on particularly good terms with the crew of the ship with the unpronounceable name. ¡°What was the agreement? You could stay on the ship as long as you provided medical support?"


    I watched Samantha as she paused again. Maybe I should have just let her speak because my gut said that pause meant she was gonna lie to me. "Something like that."


    Well, I guess that was vague enough to not be a complete lie. "Is that all you did?" I asked.


    "I had a couple other ship duties. Kept inventory on things, that sort of stuff."


    "Did you do any of the maintenance on the ship?"


    "No," she replied tersely.


    I had to shrug. I didn''t think she did. While I was fairly confident she could figure out some things. My understanding is that she didn''t touch anything mechanical.


    "Ok, so how do you wanna do this? I don''t trust you and you don''t trust me and both for pretty good reasons, but at the moment we seem to be stuck together.¡±


    "You stay on your end of the ship. I''ll stay on mine." She proposed.


    I shook my head before realizing she couldn¡¯t see me. "I''m pretty sure there has been no maintenance done in the last week, and that''s pretty much the first thing I wanna do once my nerves settle. Unless you like the idea of the CO2 scrubbers failing? Then there''s daily VSIs. Basically, I need to be able to walk around this ship just to keep it running. I''m not an engineer, but I know how to do basic maintenance."


    You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.


    I watched as she stared at the comm box before starting to pace back and forth. Nobody wanted to die because the CO2 scrubbers didn''t get changed or some dead sensor never picked up an increase in volatile gasses. She also clearly didn''t want to deal with the murderous male person on board the ship. I watched her throw up her hands in exasperation. It was kind of funny to watch, and I was pretty sure she was not aware that there were cameras everywhere in this vessel.


    ¡°I don''t know what to do," she said.


    "Well, we can either completely avoid each other or learn to work together," I suggested.


    "Yeah? And how do we do that?"


    "Well, I guess for starters if you wanted to find me a tablet, drop it off in front of the bridge and then you can go hide in the captain quarters while I do the VSI."


    "What the hell is a VSI?"


    "Visual Sight Inspection. Basically, I got to find all the damn sensors and make sure they''re working."


    "And why is that important?"


    "A dead sensor can''t warn you of a drop in pressure or dangerous mix of gasses."


    "Fine. I''ll get you a damn tablet."


    I followed Samantha''s course throughout the ship as she tried to figure out where to find a tablet that she could actually log into. The first two she found didn''t work, or at least she couldn''t get into them, but she did manage to locate one in a spares cabinet in engineering, and with no real surprise it included the program and stylus for checking sensor heads. She notified me via the ship comms that she would be hiding in her little medical room and that she would shoot me if I opened the door, whatever, not like it really mattered. I slaved the tablet to the console, allowing me to make sure that she was staying in her little room and then went out to the galley to search the cupboards for food because I hadn''t eaten in what felt like forever.


    ***


    Over the course of several days, our tense truce became a somewhat hesitant working relationship. It started out pretty simply. I stayed holed up in the bridge, she stayed holed up in her little medical cabinet. We stopped using the ship''s comms network to talk to each other, switching over to the tablet''s messaging system over the ship net. For the most part, this streamlined our ability to avoid each other. It also made it possible to have little fig-leaf gestures such as "making breakfast now, want any?" I was sleeping in the bridge, not willing to have a potentially hostile person in between me and the controls if something went bad. Samantha seemed to stick to her little medical cabinet though boredom and biological needs had her coming out more and more often.


    I spent much of the time trying to familiarize myself with the ship systems. One of the major issues was that I was pretty sure I would be locked out if the consoles ever turned off. The captain would have a captain''s key which was likely hidden on the ship. But how to find a captain''s key? After searching the captain''s quarters for a while, I realized that such a thing might actually be in the ship¡¯s schematics. Sure enough, it was. I couldn''t quite figure out how to find the actual safe, but as I had a pretty good idea of where it was, a couple of tools from engineering helped me pry open the metal paneling that hid the thing followed by a couple hours worth of watching videos and reading the manual on how to use one of the torches to cut the safe open. Sure enough, there was the captain''s key and some money. I already murdered the poor bastard, might as well rob his ass while I was at it. All the commotion I made even got Samantha to poke her head out the door which she promptly popped back into when she noticed me noticing her.


    Once we were far enough away from the station that sending telemetry for the Flying Brick would take roughly six hours to arrive, giving myself a head start, I squirted off both the coordinates and my insurance claim for my poor, hapless ship. With that, we left the comforting stars of real space for the ominous glowing lights of the Rift. By then, Samantha was doing the cooking and honestly, she was pretty good at it. While I realized she could be poisoning the food, I also was fairly certain, again, that she didn''t know how to fly the damn ship and poisoning your pilot probably wouldn''t get you very far. Theoretically, she could have poisoned me and got me in a situation where she could have me at gunpoint again, but she had already tried that and when she arrived at the station, she had realized that she was screwed on account of the excessively large bounty on her head. So I figured I was pretty safe eating the cooking and it was pretty good. Better than mine, though, to be fair, I mostly lived on reheated burritos.


    We were a day into the Rift when she took the first major chance. She had invited me to eat breakfast, which was the norm. However, when I got there, she was still in the room. The standoff was a bit odd; at some point, I had stopped checking her location on the ship¡¯s cameras at every given point, and I found myself standing on one side of the table, tablet in hand, while she stood on the other side, gripping the back of the seat like she didn''t know if she was supposed to sit or flee. It was the first time I got a good look at the girl and when you took away the fact that her skin was red, her eyes were red, and she had horns, she was kind of hot. Well, I suppose the red skin, eyes, and horns didn''t actually reduce the attractiveness, merely just made it weird because this was not a fantasy setting. Had she been in any of my games? I''d totally be into her. As it stood at this particular moment, I didn''t know if I had just been tricked into a trap or not.


    "Hi," she said, her tone uncertain.


    "Um, hello," I replied, with an uncertain tone of my own.


    For a while longer, we just stared at each other, but I figured this was gonna go nowhere unless one of us made a move, and she had already done the staying in the room. So I figured I''d do the sitting. She hesitated a minute before sitting down at her end. We ate in silence, the only actual sounds being the blowers of the environmental systems and the sounds of forks hitting plates. We both ate with one eye on the other person. It was very awkward. She was nearly finished with her eggs when she said, "Sorry, um, I don''t remember your name."


    I chuckled. I''m not certain why I found that funny. "Grant Takata."


    "I am Samantha Drakon. You can call me Sam. Please do not call me Sammy."


    I nodded an acknowledgment, and we both went back to silently eating. I finished first and slowly put my plate in the sink while keeping Sam in my periphery.


    "Thank you for the meal," I said before making my way back to the bridge where I could be safe. I watched Sam on the screen as she continued to sit at the table, staring towards the bridge. I had no idea what she was thinking, but after a few moments, she finished her meal and began washing the dishes. I was in no way going to complain about having an attractive splicer girl cook for me and clean up afterwards. If only I was certain she wasn''t going to cut my throat while I slept. To be perfectly fair, she probably had similar concerns about me.


    From then on, all meals went pretty much the same. We were only a day out from the Flying Brick when I realized it would be beneficial to have her on board the bridge with me. I fretted for several hours about how I was going to bring it up when I decided to just blurt it out during lunch.


    "I need your help."


    Sam looked at me slightly startled. She turned her head to one side so she could stare at me through the corner of her eye, a seemingly odd gesture, and I was mildly surprised to find that her ears were slightly pointed.


    "You need my help with what?" she asked.


    "I need to dig out a cube from the Flying Brick''s cargo hold," I explained. "I don''t know how long that''s going to take, and I could use somebody on the bridge watching for the ship that I''m sure is going to appear a few hours after we arrive."


    Sam just stared at me, worrying on her lower lip for almost a solid minute. "Ok," she finally said. "I don''t know how the computers up there work."


    Somehow, that was kind of a relief, admission from her, the source, that she couldn''t just fly away without me. I nodded. "It''s pretty simple. You''re not gonna be flying the ship or anything, just watching the sensors and yelling at me if something shows up."


    Sam nodded and continued eating. Today''s lunch was essentially just noodles and some type of chicken broth, which was one of those things that wasn''t really so much cooked as reheated. I couldn''t complain; I ate the same brand quite often. Sam took a deep breath before opening her mouth to speak.


    "You know what I did before I ended up here, at least the gist of it between what you''ve read in the wanted poster and my explanation of how that played out. What did you do?" she asked.


    I recognized this as mostly just trying to get comfortable around each other, much the same way that I had tried with the¡­ personal connection, hostage situation, thing. As we were going to be working together, we probably should work on the whole interpersonal thing. Not really my best set of traits.


    "I ran an Interstellar freighter for the last four or five years. I think before that, it was pretty much preparing to run an Interstellar freighter. Very boring, you know, just get a can, fly to the next port, get a new can, repeat. Mostly I played games."


    "You''ve mentioned that before, playing games. You thought this was a game?" she put quite a large scoop of sarcasm in that last question.


    "I have a Neuro Helmet system. Gives full immersion and has an adaptive AI that can pretty much create any type of situation. It''s very expensive, but on the same note, spending days, if not weeks in between systems with nothing to do but regularly scheduled maintenance, it gets kind of lonely. And yes, the system is capable of reproducing realistic physics. Those settings are usually turned off or down so that people don''t confuse the real world with the in-game environment."


    Sam didn''t verbally acknowledge my statement; her face just kind of twisted up into a half-believing grimace, and she nodded. It didn''t really matter what she thought. As far as getting the box and getting out, we were in this together. I could have dumped her off at the station. I still wondered if that wouldn''t have been the best idea, but on the same note, she still didn''t come off like the psychopath the wanted poster said she was. Conversation had died. We finished our noodles in silence, and then I did VSI. Tomorrow, we''d be rendezvousing with the Flying Brick.

 04: What’s in the Box 3

    I kind of fucked up. Generally speaking, everything is relative in space. So while there had been plenty of talk of coordinates, it wasn''t like the Flying Brick was actually sitting in one particular position. It had gone into the Rift at a certain momentum and had kept that momentum when it came out of the Rift. When you looked at the distance between stars, it was basically sitting in place, but on the ship-to-ship scale, the thing was cruising at a speed reasonable for a solar system. The computers of the Res-a-tesseract happened to know exactly where the Flying Brick was at any given point in time and which direction it was traveling. This meant that when we fell out of the Rift and found nothing, it wasn''t terribly long before the Flying Brick was found on the ship''s scanners. Of course, we were going one way and the Flying Brick was going in the opposite direction, which pretty much doubled the velocity relative to each other. Point was, it took over an hour and a half to catch up with and then rendezvous with the Flying Brick.


    Despite having never had to dock with another ship in real life, minus the one time I did it to get my pilot''s license, I found I was actually very good at docking. All those years of games had apparently prepared me for the slow, careful ease of the procedure. It took all of ten minutes to storm onto the Flying Brick, open up a duffel bag, stuff in a bunch of clothing, my Neuro helmet, and a bunch of the frozen prepackaged foods from the freezer, and storm back off the ship. Another thirty minutes of repositioning the ship and clambering into a hard suit, and I found myself spacewalking between the two ships, specifically the front lock of the Res-a-tesseract and the hole that had been cut into the cargo container mounted to the Flying Brick. This was a little bit more nerve-wracking now that I knew I wasn''t in a video game, but the only thing that was gonna hurt me was my own stupidity. My goal was to not be stupid for once. Unfortunately, we were on a timeline and I had forgotten one very important thing: I had no idea how to tell which one of these identical one meter cubed crates packed into this very large cargo container was the one I needed.


    It took another 30 minutes to close off the cargo hold of the Res-a-tesseract, deprive it of its atmosphere, and use the galley as a lock before I was back out into the cargo container attached to the Flying Brick, pulling apart the crates and shoving them downward, relative to me, into the open maw of the Res-a-tesseract. I cut the artificial gravity in the cargo hold down to something like 0.1 Standard, which was enough to make the blocks fall to the floor, but not enough to give them any sort of weight. Each new cargo crate sent into the Res-a-tesseract pinged around like billiard balls until they all settled down, only to be disturbed by the next large crate.


    This sucked. I had been in the cargo hold for well over an hour with a general fear that I was basically gonna have to take every single one of these crates because I had no idea how to tell what was supposed to be in them. Theoretically, they were all supposed to be full of lead. One of them clearly had something else in it, and the process of unlatching each individual box and pushing it down into the Res-a-tesseract''s open maw was taking forever, and then Sam comm-ed me.


    "Uh, Grant? Another ship just showed up," she said, hesitation clear in her voice.


    Well, fuck me sideways. Essentially time was up, and I''d swear that went a little faster than expected. Despite all the delays, there''s no way it''s been a full six hours yet.


    "How far out is it?" I asked.


    "Um, I don''t know."


    I grit my teeth. "There is a time to rendezvous in the lower right-hand corner of the screen, what does it say?¡±


    "Uh, it''s like 20 something minutes, but it keeps going higher," she replied.


    Okay, there was some reasonably good news. At the bare minimum, I had 20 minutes, but they were apparently slowing down, or they had come off in the same way that we had and the distance between them and the ship was increasing, but then the time to arrive would probably show an infinity sign, not an actual countdown to how long it would take. Whatever, I grabbed the next crate and pushed. There was no way I had enough time to take all these damn boxes and there was no indication as to which one of these stupid freaking identical cubes I actually needed. It was amazingly frustrating. I unhooked the next crate and shoved down with as much force as I could only to have that one ping back and forth between the row of other crates that were still latched together, forming somewhat of a tube. It got to the entrance of the Res-a-tesseract, its momentum slowed considerably as it kind of bounced back and forth like the thing weighed nothing. Well, I suppose technically it did weigh nothing, more accurately, like that massed nothing. I think I just found my crate.


    That particular crate is the only one I bothered latching down to little hooks in the floor before making my way up into the galley and ordering Sam to repressurize. It''s one of those things that took entirely too long because the galley wasn''t meant to function like a lock. There was too much volume where the air had to be pulled out and put back in and vacuum wasn''t particularly great for some of the appliances. Then again, this really wasn''t my ship and the payout for the crate was pretty good. Actually, that might be a problem in and of itself. If that ship was out here to blow me up, taking the damn crate back was a death sentence as well. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.


    I pulled off my helmet when I got onto the bridge and slammed my ass down into the pilot''s chair. Sam stayed at the navigation console which was really the only other console in the room. While it was big enough to be called a bridge, it really kind of wasn''t, not small enough to be a cockpit though. I watched the screen displaying the other ship and its various information. That ship was indeed slowing down. However. that just seemed to make it more menacing. I opened up the controls for the Rift Drive and entered our destination. Unfortunately, I was met with a warning that they could not be plotted, which caused confusion and panic to settle into my stomach. As I frantically tried to figure out why I couldn''t plot a course for any actual star system. The answer was that the capacitors were empty.


    "The capacitors are empty," I said out loud, which got Sam''s attention.


    "What''s that?" she asked.


    "I have no damn idea."


    After a quick check on the other ship, I opened up the operations manual for the Rift Drive and started searching for the capacitors. Apparently, the Rift Drive required a lot of power and it had a large capacitor that stored up the power and released it when needed. And I, in my infinite wisdom while playing with some of the ship''s systems, had turned off the switch to automatically start storing the needed power. I reactivated the damnable switch and swore when the system told me it would take about four hours.


    Okay. So our best option was to just run. We only had to make it about four hours before the capacitors would be fully charged. Unfortunately, the Res-a-tesseract didn''t exactly have great legs. By not great legs, what I really meant was that the ship essentially had the lowest-rated Grav Drive possible. It was a roll of the dice as to whether or not the other ship had better legs, but in this case, even slightly better meant we were never gonna get far enough. The ship''s scanners showed the other ship to be a variant of a light cargo ship similar to the Res-a-tesseract. That is to say, it had space inside the ship, unlike a light freighter, such as the Flying Brick, which had its cargo space as an attached can on the outside. Point being, it was a very basic ship and I had no idea what was on it, not the people, not the armaments, and not the cargo. Armaments? This was a mercenary vessel, or pirate vessel, or something. Did it have guns?


    "Sam, does this ship have guns?"


    Sam looked at me like I had some type of parasite crawling out of my ear. "How am I supposed to know?"


    "Well sorry, you''ve kind of been on the ship longer than I have."


    "Yeah. Well, we haven''t done any freaking ship-to-ship combat."


    Fair enough, but that didn''t actually answer the question. This probably wasn''t the best time to be flipping switches, of which I didn''t know what would do what, but the other ship wasn''t getting close too fast. So as they say, ¡°when in Sol,¡± it took me by complete surprise when one of the switches actually did something. The main screen popped up, a little green circle that had a three-point reticle in it. On either side of the screen were a couple groupings of numbers. Under each grouping was the word "stand by," which very shortly changed to "active." Was this guns? Specifically two of them? Where the hell were they mounted?


    Taking over the flight controls, I moved the Res-a-tesseract so that I could hide the ship behind the Flying Brick. This was not an ideal situation. The Flying Brick and the Res-a-tesseract had virtually the same amount of displacement. The only reason why this was even a reasonable plan was that the Res-a-tesseract, being a light cargo ship, had that more ship-like shape, being longer and more narrow. The Flying Brick, being a light freighter, was really just a big box with another box attached to it. Again, hiding behind the ship would not be a particularly great idea unless you, like me, happened to have a tablet still slaved to the Flying Brick''s controls. I couldn''t do much in the way of manipulating the ship, but I could see what my ship saw. I set my tablet up against the console, sat back in the chair, and opened the operator''s manual while trying to keep an eye on the other ship.


    "Sam, get a suit on," I said.


    Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.


    "Why?" she asked.


    "Because we are likely going to end up in combat. And if this room gets breached, you don''t want to die."


    She looked at me in horror before nodding her head and jumping out of her seat. Fortunately, the Res-a-tesseract had been stocked according to safety regulations, and Sam was currently trying to stuff herself into one of the soft suits. I suddenly became concerned she might not be able to get in one when I turned to see her stuffing her tail into one of the legs. I hoped the helmet would fit. Sam was currently displaying the untold drawback to horns and tails and extra body parts.


    The other ship moved sideways. I kept myself hidden behind the Flying Brick. I''m fairly certain there was no way I could fully hide the ship, they were just too equal in size, but I''m sure I was confusing the other guys. They kept changing course, veering one way, then the other, then up and down, relatively. And all the while, I was able to keep behind the Flying Brick because I could use the sensors on my ship through the data tablet. While doing this, I continuously tried to flip through the operations manual, trying to figure out how to disable the safety overrides on the Grav Drive. The Res-a-tesseract was normally limited to Six Gs. That theoretically could be pushed. It would oversaturate the inertial dampeners, likely build up heat, and quite possibly irreversibly damage the Grav Drive and Power Core, but that''d be better than dying.


    Finally, the other ship started accelerating, and that horrible little knot in the pit of my stomach seemed to grow denser as I noted that the acceleration on the other ship was 10 Gs. We weren''t running.


    "Are you ready for this?" I asked Sam over the suit¡¯s comm channel.


    She fumbled around for a moment before replying, "Not really, but I don''t think we have a choice, do we?"


    That was fair enough. The other vessel was coming in at us fast. The Flying Brick sensors said it was gonna come off just underneath the Flying Brick, a bit to starboard and aft respectively to my poor Light Freighter. I rolled the Res-a-tesseract and stuck her bow pointing straight above the Flying Brick, right where I expected the other ship to come out. The moment the ship was visible, I pulled both triggers while simultaneously pulling back on the joysticks to flip the Res-a-tesseract on its back. I had no idea what this thing was gonna shoot, but twin lines of tracers flew out at the enemy ship in a wide arc that completely missed. The thing was just going too fast. I didn''t have anywhere near enough lead on it. A small red box on the screen popped up with a little tooltip asking if I''d like to lock on. Well, that would have been helpful. I accepted the prompt, and the green circle jumped across the screen and centered itself in a spot ahead of the enemy ship. Now, that was more like the games I knew.


    "What''s that?" came Sam''s tinny voice over the suit comms. Sam was leaning over my chair and pointing at my screen as a small rectangular spinning blip seemed to be trying to point out something that couldn''t actually be seen optically, at least not at the range we were currently at.


    "I don''t know," I said just moments before that little red rectangle started spinning the other way, popped up a tooltip, and asked if I wanted to lock on to the incoming missile.


    "Yes!" I shouted at the screen as I jabbed the button for the lock. The little green radical popped directly over the incoming explosive as I pulled both triggers and filled the space between me and that thing full of lead or whatever the fuck this thing was shooting.


    "Get in your seat and strap in," I yelled at Sam, who as far as I knew was still gripping onto the back of my seat, firing as I simultaneously pulled the ship back and tried to put the Flying Brick in between me and the incoming death tube. I had a brief moment of panic as the damn missile started moving, I had to jerk the ship all over the place trying to get the bullets in the path of the missile. There was a massive delay as whatever gun mounts I was using must have been in a fixed position of the ship and didn''t have any gimbal of their own. A brief flash washed over the optical moments before a flash of relief washed over me. By some miracle, I managed to actually hit the damn thing. The pinging sound of little missile fragments caused me to hold my breath as I waited to see if the Electromagnetic Field and hull plating would prevent a puncture. The ship seemed to hold.


    "Wow, that was terrifying," Sam said, finally plopping her ass into the navigation console seat. "But are we on fire or something? It''s getting ridiculously hot."


    I checked one of the temperature gauges. "It''s probably the guns oversaturating the radiators or something. There should be an AC in your suit. Right?"


    "Oh," was Sam''s only response.


    Now that I didn''t have a death tube flying at me, I had a chance to actually look at the other ship, which unfortunately had managed to flip itself around, arrest its forward momentum, and was now heading back towards us. To make matters worse, the computer said there was another missile. I broke my attention away from the screen to look back down at the operations manual and started the process for overriding the safety measures on the Grav Drive. Hopefully, Samantha was locked into her seat because this was gonna be weird if not unpleasant.


    "Ok. Sam, hold on to your ass," I jerked the ship back and around the Flying Brick, keeping my former light freighter in between the rest of the wreck and the enemy ship as I attempted to saturate the area between us and the missile with more bullets. I swear it didn''t really seem like these things were flying correctly, the bullets, not the ship, that is. Again, the missile started jerking and jiving as it seemed to get closer and closer. As I was starting to wonder if I was gonna hit the damn thing, a large red prompt flashed up on my screen, and a quick look at it made me wonder. Just how smart are the missiles? I waited another second or two, throwing as much metal at the oncoming death tube as possible before jabbing the button for the prompt. I sent silent prayer to the stars as the red warning prompt went from saying, "heat sink reached max saturation, launch?" to "heat sink launched." I held my breath and the triggers, and waited. After a moment of delay, the missile dived downward. I didn''t really have time to relax as the enemy ship was now on us. However, this time I was ready. I dropped the Res-a-tesseract straight downward as fast as the overridden Grav Drive would allow. One of the indicator lights for the inertial dampeners went from green to yellow, and the artificial gravity in the cockpit on the bridge cut out. Sam made an uncomfortable squeal as my stomach lurched and my head seemed to spin. The green targeting reticle started moving up around the Flying Brick, and as soon as it breached my former ship, I pulled hard on both triggers while simultaneously drawing the ship backwards at 8.5 Gs, pulling the bow of the ship up and the aft down. The space between our two ships was filled with flying projectiles, not just from the Res-a-tesseract, but from the enemy ship as well, who was completing a similar maneuver. The uncomfortable squeal from Sam grew louder and odder as she apparently had not strapped in, and she, along with everything else on the bridge, was in a weird free-fall as artificial gravity warred with centrifugal force in a battle of physics that I didn''t have the math background to even start to comprehend.


    A brief flash from the aft end of the enemy vessel caused my heart to skip up into my throat before it dawned on me that it wasn''t us blowing up. It was them. I took my fingers off the triggers and gently followed the now ballistic enemy vessel, keeping the front of the Res-a-tesseract pointed at them. Sam was flailing about, trying to pull herself back into her seat as I tried to catch my breath and make my hands stop shaking.


    "Well, that was... disappointing."


    "What the fuck was disappointing about it?" Sam asked in an exasperated tone.


    I looked at her as she was only now strapping herself into her seat. "Just, you know, in movies and videos and games and shit, there''s more fire and smoke and stuff."


    She looked at me like I was stupid. "What? It wasn''t a big enough boom for you?"


    "Yeah, I guess. Sorry, that''s kind of dumb, isn''t it?"


    Looking at Sam, I suddenly realized that the artificial gravity in the cargo hold was likely off, and all those boxes of lead weren''t strapped down to anything. Oh, shit. Oh, shit.


    "Oh, holy fucking shit," I said as it suddenly dawned on me how ridiculously stupid I am.


    "What''s wrong now?" Sam asked, her eyes scanning over the instruments, looking to see exactly what was going wrong.


    "I shot first," I admitted.


    "Ok. So the ship''s fine?"


    "The ship, I don''t know.¡±


    "So why does it matter if you shot¡­" Sam''s voice trailed off as she realized the artificial gravity of my mistake.


    Why the hell did I not think to actually talk first?


    "Are you sane?" asked the girl who was accused of torturing and experimenting on people.


    Fuck. I didn''t have a good answer for that. The other ship had been slowing down to a leisurely crawl before I had started playing hide and seek behind the Flying Brick. To be fair, they hadn''t sent me any messages. I paused, looked down at my console, and flipped through a few of the screens. "Well, they didn''t send me a message or anything either," I said defensively.


    I looked at Sam, who turned her gaze down to her console and grimaced. "Um..." She poked a few buttons, and I could hear her sucking air through her teeth over the comms. "Apparently, they want to know where we disappeared to because they were supposed to observe us," she explained.


    Did that mean this wasn''t entirely my fault? I mean, it was still pretty much my fault. I did start shooting and I didn''t ask questions, but this wasn''t entirely my fault. Right?


    "You gotta be fucking kidding me," Sam half-yelled in exasperation as she unlatched her helmet. I don''t know if she was yelling at me or herself, but as she pulled the helmet off and took a breath of air, her expression changed from one of annoyance to one of fear and panic as she attempted to thrust her head back into the helmet. I looked at the internal temperature gauge, 55.7 degrees. I could see her gasping through the visor. I was pretty well cooking in my own suit. So I wondered how long it''ll be before the radiators caught up.


    Well, shit, a mass murderer, a pirate, I guess even more of a pirate, and the company I keep is a deranged psychopath splicer who experiments on people and has a big enough bounty on their head to make a sizable chunk in paying off the Flying Brick. I know I wanted life to be a bit more interesting, but this is a little too interesting. I suppose the next step was to do a damage report. Well, no, that sounded wrong, was to take a damage report? I had to figure out what kind of damage the ship had taken, if any. We still had atmosphere on the bridge and all systems seemed to be working just fine, so all good news there.


    I started by repressurizing the cargo bay. I really needed to go see what kind of damage all the falling crates had caused. They shouldn''t have flown around too much, but I am certain that they had been a bit mobile. I should specify that I tried to repressurize the cargo bay. It wasn''t working, which meant there was probably a hole in the goddamn cargo bay. There were also holes in engineering, which was kind of terrifying because literally everything important was in engineering.


    I crossed my arms and grumbled as I stared at the computer screens. The galley still had pressure, so we were back to using that as an impromptu lock. Fortunately, the temperature was actually dropping at a reasonable pace and while it was still at sauna levels, it had equalized with my suit. So off came the helmet. Sam gave me a curious look to see if I''d start gasping for air before following suit. I''m not exactly sure what my expression was, but as she got her helmet off and looked at me, her eyes went wide and her mouth dropped open slightly, in an expression of fear and concern that I can only imagine matched my own.


    "What?" she asked, as if she didn''t immediately realize the hollow, horrifying silence.


    "No blowers."

 05: What’s in the Box 4

    The cargo hold was nowhere near as bad of shape as I had expected. The railing for the ladder was dented, but that was practically minor cosmetics. The big problem, however, was the four holes. Two fist-size punctures in the hull to the starboard of the lock, followed by another two in the back of the cargo bay. One of those holes was angled up towards crew birthing; the other was headed directly into engineering, which of course was one of the worst places to have a hole in your ship. More concerning than the hole was what the bullet might have hit as it traveled through the ship. This size of vessel almost never had shields. Sure would be nice. Technically, the Res-a-tesseract had enough room as far as I understood. It would require a separate power core housing as well as the shield generators and the shield points. The machinery would take up literally the entire cargo bay, which I suppose would make the ship pretty useless. Ships this size just weren''t supposed to get shot. It also put a limit on how fast one could go. There was a certain point at which small rocks became bullets. Though in space, everything was relative. So, the direction of travel of those rocks was important. I certainly would feel safer if I had shields though.


    Sparks of electricity, globules of congealed hydraulic fluid slowly boiling away, and billows of smoke all filling a dark room is exactly what I expected when I opened the hatch to engineering. Quite honestly, I didn''t expect it to look completely normal. Everything seemed to be in good working order. There was no debris lying around, no loose fluids, no sparks, no smoke. Just engineering looking like engineering as far as I knew. Using the hole as a reference, I tracked the round''s progression through the ship where I did manage to find some damage. Just a screen attached to what I thought was the Rift Drive. Theoretically, the Drive didn''t require this screen. The broken pieces lie in a pile on the floor some distance away from said interstellar travel device and close to the exit hole. The cold harsh vacuum of space could be seen through the armor plating at this angle. Calling it armor plating sure didn''t seem right. It was one of those reminders that I lived in a tiny tin can. I cannot believe how lucky we were. Had the round come in just half a meter to the left or right, we''d be experiencing a slow death drifting through the deep dark nothing.


    Raiding the supplies closets for hull patch material because every ship had to have them, again because ¡°speeds at which a rock becomes a bullet.¡± I found the patches I was looking for. Theoretically all I would need to fix four fist sized holes. Hull patches were made of some type of semi-flexible material that hardened when a UV light was waved over it. It came with a can of goop that did practically the same thing, but was more malleable. As far as I understood, it was basically the same material. It wasn''t something you wanted to bet your life on, but it was supposed to help you repressurize. Patching the hull, the one exit wound in engineering, and the two entrance wounds in the front of the cargo bay, left me with only the one hole up top. That was a somewhat disturbing sight as the round had gone right through one of the bunks. Patching the hole was actually fairly easy, but the thought that I could be sleeping there and suddenly explode from a projectile rocketing through the ship, tearing through metal and flesh somehow unnerved me more than the fact that I could see space from inside the ship without a viewport. Patches done, I tried to repressurize the ship again, only to find there was no air with which to repressurize. Tracking that down, it turned out the large auxiliary air tank where most of the gasses had been pumped into had also been hit. I hadn''t felt the explosive force of all that gas escaping. And of course, it left another hole to patch underneath the decking. I hadn''t even thought to look under the damn decking. So now we had a problem. Theoretically, the hull had been patched enough that we could fill it with air. However, there was no air to fill it with. Actually, that wasn''t entirely true. We have the Flying Brick.


    Sam looked at me nervously as I entered back onto the bridge, pulling my helmet off and tasting the quickly staling air. "Well?" she asked, expecting something. She looked like she was hoping for good news, but expecting bad news. I guess I had both.


    "Holes are patched, but the auxiliary air tank was punctured. We''ll meet up with the Flying Brick and use its auxiliary air tanks to fill the void."


    "Ok. What about Environmental?" she asked.


    "It looks perfectly fine. I''m assuming it has something to do with the vacuum in engineering. I''m not quite familiar with that system and I hesitate to open it up in case it''s sealed and just waiting for the air surrounding it to return."


    "Are we stuck here?"


    I could see the concern in her eyes and I tried to give her a reassuring smile.


    "At the moment, that''s kind of a yes and no. I don''t really know how great the damage is. The Rift Drive got skimmed, but it looks like it''s just a display. Obviously, we can¡¯t survive the trip without O2, but there''s probably enough parts in the Flying Brick that we can jury-rig something up. If the Rift Drive doesn¡¯t work, that would mean we would be stuck here permanently. However¡­" I gave her a larger, more reassuring grin, "I filed my insurance claim. So we only have to wait about a month before somebody shows up."


    She looked a bit relieved until I added the kicker to that. "Do remember I basically pirated this ship and you''re a wanted criminal."


    Her expression of relief fell, but not dying in the endless vacuum of space was always more preferable than avoiding arrest.


    Docking with a Flying Brick was a breath of fresh air, quite literally. I took equalizing the pressure very slowly, keeping an eye to make sure that there were no actual leaks. While the Flying Brick had plenty of storage comparable to its habitable space, said habitable space was not as large as the cargo hold, let alone the cargo hold, birthing, and engineering areas of the Res-a-tesseract. The air was gonna be a little thin, but it was breathable. There was still going to be a cycling issue, but as long as we were attached to the Flying Brick, my currently dead-in-the-water little freighter would be able to supply most of the environmentals we needed to survive.


    Fortunately, and this is not something I had immediately noticed, the environmental systems on the Res-a-tesseract once again started working once we had pressure. There was a foul, scummy smell as I was pretty sure the algae matrix was dead. I didn''t specifically know how this system worked, but it didn''t take very long to open up the operations manual and follow the step-by-step instructions on how to clean out the matrix and repopulate it with new specimens. In one of those good news, bad news situations, the good news was that it was completely fixable. Bad news was, because everything had died at the same time, it would be a week before it was fully operational again. All that algae had to repopulate. I try to remember the old rhyme: "filter the water and scrub the air down. Mix it together and make it all brown," or something to that effect. I''m not exactly sure if this particular strain of algae actually turned brown. I generally preferred the mechanical systems to the biological ones. Mechanical systems were less finicky, though in the end, they tended to work less efficiently, when they were working correctly.


    The Flying Brick was mostly a mechanical system and it only had to support a single person with a max trip of about six days. The Res-a-tesseract could house about ten, so it had obviously been built to accommodate a larger environmental load. Either way, having the blowers working and air circulating throughout the ship sure made me feel a whole lot better.


    Next problem was how to get the Rift Drive up and working again. Again, that scared the shit out of me because it meant we were stuck out here. The insurance company would eventually send some type of wrecker out here to pick up the Flying Brick and get that back into habitable space. I''d rather be long gone before that happened, but I was fairly certain we had enough atmosphere and food and water before I had to worry about death. While Plan B certainly sucked, it sucked less than plan D for death. There was, of course, the entire situation with not being a ship''s engineer. I wasn''t actually trained on how to fix anything and the Rift Drive was completely new technology to me. All I did was yank a spare console out of one of the storage lockers of the Flying Brick, splice a couple of wires together, plug the damn thing in, and crossed my fingers. Oddly enough, that''s all I needed. When the console popped up with the operating system, drivers downloaded or uploaded or whatever the hell they did. The screen refreshed and asked me if I wanted to reset the Rift Drive system and run a system diagnostic. I hit the OK button since it was literally the only button I could press, and it took about three minutes for the thing to tell me everything was green. The capacitors were at 17% and now charging, and nothing else was damaged. We had gotten so incredibly lucky.


    With all the mechanical problems taken care of, I walked into the Flying Brick with a smile on my face and then remembered that there was a second person.


    "Are we going to be ok?" Sam asked almost excitedly. Likely, she had seen my smile and assumed it was good news, and I realized I had completely forgotten about her existence.


    "Yeah, everything is going pretty well," I replied.


    So, she was pretty much just pacing back and forth on the Flying Brick for several hours, wondering if we were gonna be stuck here permanently while I was happily fiddling with algae matrixes and pushing big green buttons.


    "Sorry, probably should have mentioned it sooner. The, um, Rift Drive capacitor thing is charging. It''ll be a few days before the environmentals on the Reser-tesser, ah the Res-a-tesseract or whatever the hell the name of the ship is. The environmentals should be good on the Res-A-TessERact, in a few days, and everything is working out okay."


    The best news was that because we were docked with the Flying Brick, I got to take a nice long shower and put on a fresh set of clothing. I wasn''t quite pleased with wearing other people''s clothing from the mercenary/pirate ship.


    Samantha looked completely relieved. She flopped herself down on the stool at the galley''s small table and laid her head down in such a way that her hair just kind of puddled the best it could, considering its short length. I flopped down into my comfy chair first. I wondered if I should take this chair and put it on the Res-a-tesseract. Actually, we had other problems. I might have filed the insurance claim, but I was a little vague on how I had gotten off the ship. There''s no way there wouldn''t be an actual investigation where I would likely be accused of piracy and possibly murder. Had I gone straight to the authorities? I might have gotten over that, but now I had just slaughtered more people, and I was fairly certain I was kind of screwed. Certainly, the broker wasn''t going to be happy that I shot the ship that was supposed to be keeping an eye on me to make sure that I brought the stuff back. I really didn''t know if bringing the stuff back would be some type of appeasement or if I would just be murdered on the spot. I didn''t even know what the stuff was. For all I knew, there could be a nuclear warhead in the damn crate. I suddenly wanted to be anywhere other than where I had to go. Maybe I should do just that. The Res-a-tesseract wasn''t the light freighter I was used to, but I would end up leaving in it because it had the Rift Drive. I could just go fuck off to some other star system. I''m not sure what we should do.


    "Hey, Sam, what do you think we should do?" I asked.


    The demon-looking splicer girl pulled her head off the desk and looked at me like she hadn''t actually considered it. To be fair, we were a little busy trying not to die. "What do you mean?" she asked in return.


    "I mean, what do you think we should do? I''m pretty sure we can''t actually return the crate considering we killed the broker''s guys, and this technically isn''t my ship. I know I''ve killed at least seven people and taken this ship. I keep referring to this ship. I mean, the ship over there," I pointed towards the lock. "I don''t really know what we should be doing. As far as I understand, you''re screwed if you ever leave this vessel and I''m not convinced that I''m not in the same boat. I quite literally, I guess. Just, what are your thoughts?"


    Sam continued to stare at me like nothing I said was making sense. "Uh, sorry, I''m not actually used to anyone asking for my opinion," she finally said.


    "Well, I''m asking. What''s your opinion?"


    She pressed her lips together in a tight thin line for a moment as though she was hesitating on whether or not to actually say what was on her mind. She must have come to a decision because she sat up in the chair straighter, looked me dead in the eye, and said, "We should verify that the people in the other ship are dead, and if they''re not, we should render aid." Her tone made me think she expected me to dismiss her thoughts. She actually had a really good point. Even if they wanted to fight to the death, fighting to the death sounded better than slowly dying. I certainly rather be shot than starved or really, it was probably more of an asphyxiation situation.


    I nodded. "Ok."


    "It''s not right to leave people out in the middle of nothing to slowly die. It''s also our fault they''re dead or dying. I think you should at least consider¡­" She paused, her eyes going wide and her mouth unhinging a bit. "you agreed?" she asked, as though the thought that I might agree with her was unfathomable.


    "Yeah," I said with a quick nod.


    "Oh, okay," she replied.


    "Did you want to go now?"


    "Um, sure."


    ***


    Things did not look good. The other ship was dead in the water, metaphorically speaking. It rolled and twisted slowly in a pattern that made it completely undockable. Sam and I both stared at the hulk. I don''t know what she was thinking, but I was trying to wrap my mind around how I would dock.


    "How do we dock?" she asked.


    The question made me chuckle, and I''m pretty sure Sam gave me a dirty look. "I''m trying to figure that out," I replied. "I kind of wish we had, like a drone or something, something that we could pilot out there and just kind of tap it a little bit, you know?"


    "Would that work?"


    "I have no idea, but a ship has a lot of mass and I''d rather not nose to nose it. I don''t think we would actually get it to stop."


    "Nose to nose?"


    "Yeah, well, both ships have the docking ring on the, uh, the nose."


    "Oh."


    We continued to stare at the drifting ship. I wondered if there was a way that we could connect a cable somehow and kind of reel it in. That actually would not make much sense. I tried comm-ing the dead ship a couple of times. There''s no way that would work with no power. Though theoretically, there would be some auxiliary systems online, while I had clearly caused the Power Core to detonate, it only split the aft end of the ship apart. People could still be on the bridge and if it was anything like the Res-a-tesseract, the galley and bridge might still be intact. With a shrug, I tried to maneuver the Res-a-tesseract so we could get a clear shot of the cockpit when it came back around. It took a lot of minutes and a lot of attempts to actually get a good view into the cockpit, which as far as we could tell, was completely dark.


    ¡°I don''t think there''s a way for us to get in there," I said.


    "Could we EV?"


    "It doesn''t look like it''s spinning that fast, but remember, that''s a lot of mass, when it swings around we might just end up splatting against the hull," I replied.


    "Well, that''s kind of horrifying," Sam remarked.


    "Yeah, I expect I would be the one doing the ill-advised EVA and you don''t know how to fly this thing, do you?"


    "So, what should we do?" Sam asked.


    Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    I shrugged. "I don''t know. I don''t really see any point in sticking around. We can''t dock with it. I can''t stop it from spinning. We should probably go back to the Flying Brick and cycle the air through for maybe another day or so, but we should probably just leave. The ship needs some repairs," I said, letting the words drift through the nothingness much like the derelict light cargo ship in front of us.


    It took a while before Sam shrugged and I pulled the Res-a-tesseract away. Theoretically, there was probably some maneuver where we could use the Gravity Drive to slow the other ship''s spin, but I didn''t have the slightest clue how to do that, and learning out in the middle of nowhere where a hull breach would get us all killed didn''t sound like a good idea just for the off chance that somebody was alive in there.


    We docked with the Flying Brick, and I tried to get a good night''s sleep in my own bunk. Presumably, Sam was in her little medical cabinet and after breakfast the next day, we decided it was time to leave. I''d like to say there was a small argument over where we were going, but it was literally just me listing off the star systems with Sam giving a slightly uneasy look to each one, and we eventually just picked one at random. It''d be a three-day journey.


    "This ship sucks," I declared.


    Sam looked up from her breakfast and across the table at me. I had my tablet open and was looking over the schematics of the ship for the umpteenth time because honestly, I was stuck with it. I realized I had spent so much time alone that I had gotten quite used to just talking out loud to myself and I was a bit surprised when she said, "Why?"


    I looked over at the girl and tried to replay what I had originally said out loud. I set the tablet down, leaned back in my seat, and began to explain.


    "Well, for starters, the captain''s quarters and the crew quarters are all sitting directly above engineering. Anything goes wrong in there and pretty much everybody dies. There''s a massive cargo hold sitting in the center of the ship, which is just a great big volume of air with very little in the way of protection or, honestly, even structural support. The bridge and galley are set over a large chunk of the cargo bay and slightly back from the lock. Which, to be fair, that''s mostly just me feeling like that''s rather ugly. It really is an ugly ship. The Flying Brick was a big box, usually connected to another big box, and all the stuff was kind of jammed together, but that was a size issue. The Res-a-tesseract is big enough that they could have used a better layout.¡± I took a deep breath in, ¡°Another thing that bugs me is that there are no mechanical life support systems in any of the compartments other than engineering. I really don''t think it would increase the mass much to just add a small environmental system in the bridge so that the people piloting the vessel don''t immediately die if there''s a decompression issue in engineering. They could put a small system in pretty much all the rooms, and it would drastically increase the crew''s ability to fix whatever problem happened instead of just falling over dead. Honestly, if we couldn''t connect with the Flying Brick out in the middle of nowhere, I don''t think we would have survived."


    It was clearly a sobering thought because Sam''s expression changed from one of vague interest to kind of a sick grimace.


    "Yeah. So this ship sucks."


    "How would you change it?" she asked.


    The comment was launched at me much like the way this other vessel launched their flying death tubes. I shrugged. "Put crew quarters underneath the bridge and galley, and put the lock on the side. I''m sure there are other better configurations, but that alone would change some of the issues. And I¡¯d put some mechanical redundant environmental system in each of the compartments. You can still use the larger algae-based environmental system for the ship as a whole, but seriously, in an emergency, it would be really nice to not have to worry about not being able to breathe."


    Sam looked at me as though she hadn''t expected an answer. I really did get the feeling that she had no idea about how ships functioned at all and that she had simply assumed that this was the best layout for a ship because it was the ship she was on.


    "Ships aren''t exactly my area of expertise, but correct me if I''m wrong, I think I know more than you do."


    She shook her head. "No.¡±


    ¡°Well, what''s your area of expertise?"


    It was her turn to shrug. "Active genetic modification, gene therapy, and I''ve got enough basic medical knowledge that I could almost pass as a doctor." She put a heavy emphasis on the ''almost'', and I wondered if there was a point of contention as her facial expression seemed to scrunch up a bit, telling me that there was more story behind the ''almost'' part.


    "Well, I guess that''s good. I don''t know a damn thing about the human body, I mean, beyond some of the limits of my own, I guess."


    Sam hadn''t changed much since I first met her. She seemed to prefer the black pleated skirt and heavy boots. Not that I could complain, she had nice thighs. The tail was a little weird, and it''s probably the reason she liked skirts. I can''t imagine working too well with pants, and her collection of t-shirts almost entirely consisted of various bands, almost none of which I have ever been familiar with, though to be fair, most music these days was computer synthesized, so I never really got into any of the actual human groups. Today''s shirt was a dark gray with several weird symbols and stylized letters that said "Dark Witch." She was back in the lab coat and again had a collar on. This one was a bit lighter in material, still matte black, but thin and somewhat lacy. Honestly, my traveling companion who may or may not have been a psychopath, visually speaking, was kind of a hot, Gothic Succubus Doctor Chick. It kind of hit some personal fantasies, but I drove those out of my mind. Relationships are what I had a Neuro helmet for. I didn''t really know how to deal with real people. Anything I did or said here could not be undone. I took a moment to think about my Neuro helmet. It was still sitting in my duffel bag. Come to think of it.


    "I wonder what''s in the crate?"


    I spoke it out loud, and again, Sam brought her eyes up to look at me and said, "Crate?"


    "Yeah, the crate. The one your previous crew pulled me out of the Rift to get, the one we came back for."


    Sam turned her head from me to look behind her in the direction of the cargo bay. "Huh? I don''t know."


    "I bet it''s a fucking nuke," I said with a long sigh, because that would be my damn luck. I couldn''t sell a nuke, I couldn''t deliver a nuke back to wherever it was supposed to go. The best I could think to do with a nuke is drop it into a sun somewhere or turn it into some type of authority. Actually, was it a good idea to drop a nuke into the sun? I suppose if I did it in some uninhabited system, maybe it''d be okay. Maybe I should get some advice on that before taking that product. Then again, maybe it wasn''t a freaking nuke. Sam looked at me, I looked at her, and then we both scooted out of our chairs and started heading to the hatch for the cargo bay.


    The crate containing the unknown object sat towards the front of the ship. I lashed everything else down towards the aft end by the hallway to engineering. I had the gravity over there dialed down to less than half because, honestly, 1 cubic meter crates full of lead likely weighed a ton. Well, more than a ton, a lot of tons. I didn''t know what that would do to the deck plating. It was very weird to walk over there on VSI. The human body did not like shifting artificial gravity, but back to the crate. After a closer inspection, I noted that the crate was on its side. I unlatched the little hooks that kept it to the floor and with a grunt, pushed the thing back over so it was upright. I saw Sam wince out of the corner of my eye.


    "What?" I asked.


    She shrugged. "What if it is a nuke?"


    I froze. It hadn''t exploded yet, so that was a good sign. I looked at the clasps that held the lid shut. Pretty standard stuff. It wasn''t even locked. I looked at Sam, I looked back at the crate, grabbed the latch, and as I started pulling it open, Sam said, "Wait!" I looked back up at her, and she looked at me, a slightly horrified expression plastered on her face. "What if it''s some type of alien?"


    I let go of the latch and stepped away from the crate before shaking my head. "It can''t be, at least not a living one. It was in a cargo can. There''s no heat," I said.


    "What if the container has a heater?"


    "Well, this was nerve-wracking." I approached the container, set my ear against it, and knocked on it. The thing sounded hollow and mostly made of plastic, or whatever material they make this stuff out of. I looked back at the hot Gothic Succubus Doctor Chick. "I don''t hear anything."


    "Ok, just be careful," Sam cautioned.


    Before I could lose my nerve, I flipped the latch. Now, the crate was technically open and of course nothing happened. I put my fingers in between the groove that separated the lid and the lower part and pried slightly. There was a hiss of air as the pressures equalized, and I pulled the lid open just far enough to take a look inside. I paused. I could practically hear Sam''s joints creaking slightly as she stiffly leaned in closer, waiting to see what was inside. Or maybe those were my own joints, yeah, more of a feeling than a sound. I was probably just imagining it. Seeing nothing trying to pop out and attack me, I pulled the lid off.


    The crate was stuffed completely full of small asymmetrical blobs of some type of foam packing material. I picked one up and squeezed it. It was soft and foamy, and if it was smaller, it might make good pillow material. All the pieces kind of interlocked together haphazardly, which likely meant whatever was packed inside was pretty snug.


    "It''s full of foam," I said, again more to myself than to Sam, but Sam replied anyway, "No shit."


    I shrugged and started pulling more of the foam away. "I swear, if this entire crate is just foam," I said, having cleared out like a full tenth of the stupid foam bits. I was getting really close to the point where I was thinking about just dumping the whole crate over and starting to scoop it all out onto the floor.


    "Well, there''s gotta be something in there," Sam remarked.


    "Wouldn''t it be completely hilarious if this 100,000-credit crate is just a red herring full of freaking foam?" I joked.


    "That would be quite the red herring," Sam conceded, now helping me pull out the foam, having gotten over her temporary fear that there might be something biological and alive inside. However, if I had a nuke in a box, I might pack it full of foam too. I didn''t say anything though, I was appreciating the help.


    Sam''s hand shot back, and she held it to her chest as though she had touched something unpleasant. I pulled another foam thing away to reveal something metal and vaguely cylindrical in shape. A little more clearing, and I looked at Sam and said, "I don''t think it''s a nuke."


    She glared at me. "And do you know what a nuke looks like?"


    I shrugged, seeing the point. I didn¡¯t have the slightest idea what an actual nuke would look like without the missile housing around it. Careful removal of more material showed a kind of pedestal. I picked the thing up, pulled it fully out of the crate, and set it down on the floor of the Res-a-tesseract. We stood on opposite sides of the thing, and Sam reached down and pulled off a plastic card literally taped to the metal pedestal thingy. She examined both sides of the card before reading.


    "Well, here you go. Don''t let this end up as another Anthro Incident." Sam looked back up at me and flipped the card around so I could see the text; indeed, that¡¯s what it said. "What is an Anthro Incident?" she asked.


    I shrugged and turned my attention back to the pedestal. It certainly wasn''t very tall, only about knee height. It looked like something that could be placed onto a desk, but then it would be too tall unless you were standing. The top of it kind of curved inward, but had a bunch of little tiny lenses or something.


    "Looks like a holo tank," I said, because really, that''s kind of what it looked like. A little holo projector, a little novelty holo projector mounted to a housing which probably had components inside of it. Examination of the thing revealed some ports and a switch, which I flipped because, you know, there was a switch. In hindsight, in all the stories and books and games, usually things went horribly wrong when the main character flips some random switch on a random device. This apparently wasn''t one of those things because all that happened was that the little holo projector-looking thing at the top glowed slightly like a holo projector thing, and some type of image about 25 centimeters tall popped into being in kind of a thin line.


    "That''s weird." I quickly realized that it was a two-dimensional image. Moving my position to look directly at it, it appeared to be a girl. A two-dimensional image of a little animated girl in a three-dimensional projector. "What the hell?!"


    "She''s cute," Sam said in a very Sam-like way, seemingly missing the point that they were using a holo projector to project a two-dimensional image of an animated girl. Said girl was sitting down, her head buried into her knees, and her arms wrapped around her legs. The image was not moving. This made no fucking sense. We had a fancy holo projector that projected a two-dimensional image, and it wasn''t even moving. Why the hell was this supposed to be worth 100,000 credits to obtain? Which meant it was worth more to whoever was paying to have it obtained. This was borderline stupid.


    "I think somebody is getting screwed," I said, more to the cargo bay as a whole than to Sam.


    "What? Why? What do you mean?"


    I pointed to the stupid holo-projector. "100,000 credits to obtain this thing. I feel like it''s a joke. Maybe it is a red herring. My guess is several shipments were sent out and only one has the correct whatever that''s supposed to be in the crate. I think that''s what I would have done if I was like a criminal mastermind or something."


    "What if it''s an AI?" Sam asked.


    "So what if it is? Why the hell would you attach an AI to a holo projector? More specifically an AI that has a two-dimensional avatar? That doesn''t make any damn sense at all."


    It was Sam''s turn to shrug and look confused. She pointed at the holo-projector and said, "I don''t think it can hear or see us. Can you connect to it somehow or turn on some speakers or something?"


    I examined the ports on the holo-projector. There was a single port for a rather substantial data connection, further supporting the theory that this was some type of AI. I left the holo-projector with its tiny two-dimensional girl and stuck my head back into the crate full of foam blob things. I decided to tip the whole thing over and start sifting through the padding material. "Nothing," I stated as I looked over at Sam, who was poking her finger through the two-dimensional image. She looked at me, screwed up her face, and said, "Connect wirelessly?"


    I sat my ass down in front of the holo-projector and pulled out my tablet. Sure enough, there was a new device I could connect to. Once connected, I stared at my tablet and waited for something to pop up on it, but nothing happened.


    "Oh," came Sam''s voice, which I thought was weird because nothing was happening. A quick look at her face directed my attention to the projector where the two-dimensional avatar of the girl thing had stood up. She was now looking around with an expression you might have if somebody called your name in a crowded room. It was like the figure knew I had just connected, but wasn''t sure where the connection was. She chose a direction and started walking. She never actually moved from the center of the holo projector. It just showed an animation of her walking in one direction, kind of looking around. Occasionally she would spin around as though she were gawking at the sights of some tourist area or something, all while having that expression of, "I heard something, where the hell did it come from?" I looked from the now-moving avatar to Sam.


    "Ok, I guess it knows I''m connected." I pointed the tablet''s speaker towards my face and said, "hello?" Nothing happened. The projection didn''t seem to notice any other sounds and just continued walking and looking around. She stopped, put her hands on her hips, and slowly rotated, a puzzled expression on her face.


    The avatar had light blue hair and light blue eyes. When I say light blue, I didn''t mean it was just the color light blue. It seemed to be made of a very low-saturated blue light, kind of glowy and wispy. Her hair was long and straight and kind of moved as if the artificial gravity was down to something like 0.1 G despite the rest of her body and clothing acting as if it was in standard gravity. She had a cute, but low-res face, large eyes, tiny nose, her mouth went from just a tiny dot to considerably more complex depending on whether or not her mouth was open. She wore a coat/dress thing with a high collar that hugged her shape down past her waist and went to about mid-thigh. It had sleeves, but was missing a large chunk of fabric exposing her shoulders from the collar to about mid-upper arm. It was, for all intents and purposes, just a two-dimensional animated character. A lot of white and blue in the design.


    "Is the microphone on?" Sam asked.


    I looked at Sam; she herself was kind of bent over, her hands on her knees but with her legs straight. If I was behind her, I''d get a great view. I shook that image out of my head and went back to the problem at hand. I flipped through my tablet''s settings.


    "I''m not exactly sure. Normally when you connect to a new device, it gives you some type of UI. How the hell do I turn the microphone on just to have the damn thing on?" Going through some of the settings and did eventually find an option to have the microphone on. Likely that was for some app or something, but I flipped the switch, looked at the avatar, and said, "hello."


    The tiny animated girl''s head shot towards the side as though she heard me, though it was not in the correct direction. Her mouth moved, but I heard nothing, and I figured I''d probably have to figure out how to make the speakers always on as well. This thing seriously needed some type of UI, and I didn''t know how to make one.


    "Can you hear us?" Sam asked.


    The avatar looked around some more then disappeared. Letters popped into existence that read, "I can hear you, can you hear me?"


    I saw Sam grin out of the corner of my eye. "Not yet, we''re having issues making things go through the tablet," Sam told the AI while I was flipping through screens trying to figure out how to work the speakers. I quickly gave up.


    "I''m gonna search the crate more," I said, handing Sam the tablet so she could keep playing with the AI while I figured out if there were more parts somewhere in the crate. She took it and plopped her ass down on the cold metal of the ship''s decking. In the background, I could hear her talking to the little animated avatar as I dumped the crate completely over. Once I verified it was empty, I started refilling it with all the little foam packaging things. It took probably a good 10 minutes before I got most of it scooped back in, and I didn''t find any extra pieces. With a crate full of foam and still a bunch of extra foam that didn''t seem to fit back in the box, I started walking around the ship, trying to figure out what might have a speaker that could connect wirelessly to something. Ship comms were hardwired. Theoretically, the ship could connect to the holo-projector AI thing, but that didn''t actually fix the problem of not knowing how to force the speakers to be always on. At some point, I found myself in the server cabinet, looking at the wires and plugs in there. It was really just a server rack that ran all the computing for the ship, with one big thing of note: the plugs for the cables were exactly what I would be plugging into that holo-projector. Theoretically, I could plug her directly into the ship''s systems cabinet, but I didn''t seem to have any spare cables. There were ports I could plug her into, but I wasn''t willing to unplug some ship system just to talk to an AI. I shrugged and closed the cabinet, walked back to the cargo bay, and leaned over the rail, looking down at Sam who was still communicating with the thing. Sam was speaking, and the little AI thing was replying with two-dimensional holographic text. How fucking weird.


    "Hey, Sam," I called out to get her attention. "I found a place I can plug her in, but I don''t have a cable. Good if we just sit on this little mystery for a day and a half or so?"


    Sam bit her lip while looking up at me for a few moments before nodding once, turning her attention back to the little AI and shooting me a half-hearted thumbs up. Whatever. Little succubus demon doctor girl could play with a toy while I sat back and did more important things. Like wonder what the hell I was gonna do with my life now that I was probably gonna be a criminal. Did I turn myself in? Did I keep running? Shit, could I just go to a different sector of space and just leave this all behind me someplace? A little more backwater like the actual frontier. The sector that held the edge of human space was only like what? 100 light years away, it wouldn''t take that long, would it? I sat down in my comfy gaming chair and glanced over at my duffel bag, which still had my Neuro helmet. I wonder if I could plug the AI into that thing. I shrugged to myself then fished for my tablet when I realized that currently it was in the possession of Sam. Oh fuck. I had to pick my ass out of the seat and walk into the cargo bay.

 06: What’s in the Box 5

    "Res-a-tesseract, please state your purpose. You''re making station security nervous."


    I looked up from my tablet at the station drifting lazily outside the viewport. Oh, shit. That wasn''t the idea. I reached for the comms to reply.


    "Uh, sorry about that. This is the first time I''ve had damage. I was searching Station Net, trying to figure out where I was supposed to go for repairs," I hope that would nullify them. In hindsight, hovering above the shipping lines probably was a little bit menacing.


    "Acknowledged. Sending handshake with your docking computer," the briefest of moments later, the console lit up with a request to accept the station taking control of the docking computer. I hit the accept button and the ship started moving on its own accord. There was nothing special to it, a bit to port, a bit down, forward, and then launching onto the docking bay. The only thing that still got me with the Res-a-tesseract was that the docking port was on the front instead of the side.


    "Landry is the only one here that specializes in actual ship repair. Most of the outfitters can be found just off this arm. Follow the rules. Enjoy your stay," with that said, the screen popped up with the question of whether or not I wanted to begin filling the tanks and who was paying for the docking fees? I punched in my numbers for the docking fees, but denied the tankage on account that one of my tanks was ruptured. Who knew what else was ruptured? Now, I had to go find whoever Landry was and did I have to explain how I got damaged? I didn''t like the idea of that. Maybe I could just say pirates. I wonder if that''s an actual thing that happens with people that have Rift Drives? Though I suppose it''s also a thing that happens to people without Rift Drives and I was living proof. Sam had already sent a rather comprehensive restock list to my tablet. So as soon as I was certain that I could actually start, I began accepting cargo, which I guess was kind of normal when you consider that I still had to find cargo for the ship, but the stuff had to fit inside the vessel instead of being latched to the outside. Also, the destination needed to be farther away from the Broker''s station.


    Now that we were docked to the station, there were two things that could be done. Firstly, there were the data packets that kept coming in. I had downloaded enough tutorials to figure out that I could copy the incoming data stream to new folders and take a look at them. I still didn''t know how to actually stop them yet. I watched as the data came in, populated the folders, and then got sent out to whatever devices they were supposed to go to. I opened the first one, it really should not have surprised me. The ship had been full of like seven guys. All of which were some type of either mercenary or pirate or something. An archive of pornography was not that groundbreaking. I didn''t know what device it was going to, but now that I know it wasn''t important, all I had to do was blacklist the device.


    On the other hand, the other folder had a mixture of different files. I found it surprising, though I shouldn''t have. I couldn''t actually open a lot of the files, they were updates to some other file or another, but the ones I could open were bounties. Yeah, literal bounties. Like there''s a price on this person''s head in this area. There''s a derelict ship that needs to be located in this region of space, someone stole the vessel of this make and model and it needs to be located and the person apprehended. I assume this was all going to the Captain¡¯s Console. That would make a lot of sense  and it also kind of told me what these people had been doing. They were in some ways bounty hunters. I wondered if retrieving the box that was buried in my cargo container was some type of legitimate bounty. Though, with the whole broker thing, I didn''t really think so. Maybe a side job for a capable crew or something. I''d have to either get into the captain''s console or figure out how to emulate the software so I could look at the bounties myself. I doubt I''d ever make a good bounty hunter, but I could give it a shot. With that done, I checked the Station Net to verify that I wasn''t a criminal, at least not yet, and then got up as I was gonna have to go station-side.


    Sam walked onto the bridge just as I was about to leave. She stopped suddenly realizing I was in her path and her face went from glaring at her tablet to mild surprise. I don''t think she expected me to be here, but the smile told me she was a bit pleased.


    "Hey, is Ship Net down?"


    "Uh, no, why?¡±


    ¡°I can''t connect and I don''t know if it''s my tablet or if it''s Ship Net."


    I took a step back because it was a little close quarters on the bridge and held my hand out for her tablet. I flipped through the settings and located its ID. Sitting back down at the console I navigated to the blacklist, verified that it was indeed the same ID, and re-enabled her tablet''s permissions to use Ship Net. I handed the tablet back to her.


    "Sorry about that. I was playing with some stuff. I must have blocked it."


    "Oh, ok," she said cheerily, clearly happy to have her tablet back and in working order.


    I watched her leave, skirt and tail swaying as she walked off. A ship full of male mercenary pirates, and it was the ship¡¯s female medic that was downloading porn. I wonder if there was anything to the succubus persona beyond just looks.


    ***


    Nobody called it Zero-Deck. It was referred to as Oh-Deck. Essentially, it was the part of the space station where most of the docking arms were. Every space station was different, but due to the constant comings and goings, most of the four or five decks in the center of any station were pretty similar. Further to the interior of the O-Deck was who knew what, possibly just storage, but mostly O-Deck was ship services and a whole lot of cargo loading and unloading.


    Deck One tended to focus on the business end of things. That''s where a lot of shipping offices were located. Deck two tended to be more of your fine dining, hotels, stuff for the tourists or the crew members who wanted to splurge a bit on themselves. Going negative, the Neg-One tended to support all your chandleries and other ship services that didn''t immediately settle on the O-Deck. Things like painting services, refurbishing services, stuff like that. Neg-Two is generally where all the spacers went. It was the place where all your dance clubs, bars, and cheap and terrible entertainment was. It also included a large number of restaurants that catered to the clientele that existed on ship time and not station time. The general thought was that the whole system, at least Two through Neg-Two, had been pirated from some book written thousands of years ago. I had been on plenty of stations that didn''t follow the usual rules, but the usual rules were very handy when all you did was attach, drop off a can, pick up a new can, and head back out. There was a subculture to spacers and generally speaking, keeping them separated from the station culture tended to be pretty good policy.


    I sat in a hole in the wall restaurant, forking up the last of my hash browns and listening to the general chatter of the people around me. Two hours on station and I was already sick of people. There was a word for people like me, but it didn''t actually fit. The word was Rifter. The general stereotype being a person would rather be off in space flying between ports than dealing with the humans aboard any of the stations, orbitals, or planets. Honestly, that would be a very good description of me except for one small tiny little fact. I hated the fucking Rift. Rifters were the weird ones that didn''t feel uncomfortable in the subspace. If it even was a subspace, I don¡¯t think anybody actually knew what the Rift was and every once in a while you hear the horror stories about ships that go in and never come out. Ghost stories or not, it still kind of creeps me out. I sat on the dividing line between Spacer and Rifter and for once, I had a thought that wasn''t about me. Sam couldn''t get off the ship. I''m not exactly sure what about thinking about space or culture had tripped that little factoid, but I realized that the girl couldn''t get off and eat somebody else''s cooking.


    I punched in an order to-go on my kiosk, paid the tab and waited. I hope the repairs on the ship didn''t take too long. Fortunately, it was almost entirely paid off by the previous captain''s credit chips, which he had left stored in his safe. It wasn''t entirely enough, but covered the majority of it. My bank account was starting to drain rather quickly, to the point I already couldn''t afford the next payment on the flying brick, but what the hell, why not default on that loan too? I already murdered people, stole a ship and then murdered some more people. Why not loan delinquency? For the umpteenth time today, I paused to check my profile to see if I was wanted for anything. I still didn''t have a price on my head. So that was good. I still had crates full of lead, of which I had no idea what to do with, and though it was my first time playing with the small cargo system, I actually found and scheduled a cargo for a star eight light years away. Fucking glorious. It wasn''t gonna pay me a whole hell of a lot, but it would pay for the trip and give me some practice with how the hell this small cargo worked. Will also get me further away from the broker and all that. I think I pretty well decided I was just gonna run.


    The waiter brought me my to-go bag and coffee, and I headed back towards the ship. My ship. Can I call it mine? I fucking stole the damn thing. I had stayed on board while they were fixing the underneath parts. A large majority of the cost was a new oxygen tank that had been pulled out, hauled out the lock and then replaced with a newer shiny model with a newer shiny price tag. Really? I should stop grumbling over spending somebody else''s money. Just wasn''t all his money and even if I wanted to sell the weird AI with its two-dimensional avatar that lived in a 3D Holo Tank, no one was gonna pay 100,000 credits for whatever she was supposed to be.


    I climbed up the ladder and poked my head into the galley to check if Sam was in there, she wasn''t, which meant she was likely in her little medical cabinet. The one place she felt most safe. I made my way there, knocked on the door and then opened it. I froze when I saw Sam.


    Samantha Draken was sitting in her chair facing her tablet which was propped up on her desk. I had a view of her side as she flailed wildly. She was holding something in her hands, but was moving around a bit too fast for me to tell what the hell it was. Her head was bobbing. Her feet were thumping the deck plating in what I could only assume was some type of beat or rhythm and she kept taking sharp intakes of breath. What the fuck? I watched for far too long and she eventually hit a point where she stopped moving so quickly and began a slow tap of a single spot in the air with what could only be a drumstick.


    "Sam?"


    She didn''t appear to hear me. The only sounds in the room were the environmentals and her heavy breathing. She turned away from me, started drumming the drumsticks in the air on one side and turning clockwise towards me. On what I could only assume was the final hard smack of an air drum, she finally noticed me and practically jumped out of her chair with a scream. Of course, that made me jump, nearly spilling the coffee.


    "What the hell, what the hell?" Sam shouted. She then started hitting her ear as though something were crawling in it.


    "What do you mean, what the hell?"


    "You scared me," she said like I had actually tried to scare her.


    "I knocked."


    "Well, I didn''t hear you."


    "How could you not hear me?¡±


    ¡°Because I have music in my ears," she said, brushing her skirt off.


    "How do you have music in your ears? You''re not wearing any plugs or anything?"


    "Augments," she said in that kind of you''re-an-idiot tone girls get sometimes.


    "You have augments?"


    "Yeah. Doesn''t everybody?"


    "No," I said.


    She shrugged. "Well, why not?"


    I lifted up the to-go container and coffee and asked, "You want breakfast?"


    Sam''s eyes lit up. "You bought me breakfast."


    "Yeah."


    "What did you get?" she asked, taking away the container and opening it up to look inside. "Omelet, hash browns, I don''t actually know what you like."


    "I like anything I don''t have to cook. Ooo coffee."


    "You''re welcome."


    Sam placed the tray on her desk, set her ass back in her seat, and took a sip of the coffee.


    "I thought you''d be gone longer," Sam said, opening up the little plastic fork and spoon set.


    "Why? Honestly, I''m ready to blow this place."


    Sam looked at me like I had worms crawling out of my eyes. "Seriously? The previous guys used to spend the day and most of the night off the ship when they got to dock," she shoved a piece of egg in her face and closed her eyes with a "Mmmm."


    "Well, I guess I was born in space. I''ve spent my entire life in space, and I''d rather be in space."


    Sam nodded and kind of said, "All right."


    At least I''m fairly certain that''s what she said. Probably shouldn''t talk with her mouth full. "Are we all stocked up on food and spares?" She had given me the list to order from, I had ordered, it was delivered, but once everybody else was off the ship, I had left her to put away everything.


    "Yeah. All spares are stocked and the freezer is, well, full as it can be."


    "What do you mean full as it can be?" I didn''t like their tone when she said that.


    She looked up at me again like I was the perplexing one and said, "Well, it''s currently full of bodies."


    "You put the bodies in the freezer?"


    She giggled, probably at my expression, which I assume looked pretty flabbergasted. What the hell did she put bodies in the freezer for?


    "What else was I supposed to do with them?" she asked.


    "I don''t know, space them," I said.


    "But they might hit something."


    "In the middle of nowhere. It would be like the best place ever to space them."


    "Oh."


    Really? That was her final statement? ¡°Oh.¡± What the hell? I pinched the bridge of my nose.


    "Anyway, I expect there to be people here in about an hour to load up on our current cargo. Just note that, so you can stay here."


    With that, I walked out and back up to the bridge, pausing for a moment as I went through the galley and looked at the large freezer. Every time she opened that thing, she had been putting food around frozen bodies. What the actual hell? I slumped in the pilot''s chair and began fiddling with downloads, primarily courses on how to actually do some programming or system routing stuff. I needed to be able to get into the Captain''s console or at least set up my own console with its bounty hunter database thing. I probably wasn''t gonna end up as a bounty hunter, but depending on what options were available, who the hell knew.


    We were pulling away from the station when my tablet bipped. I pulled up the screen and opened the message. Good news was the message was for me; it was a thing I had set up to inform me if something became available. Bad news was that something that became available was a bounty on my head. 15,000 credits for the capture of myself and the ship. Last known location was the station that had the broker on it, and I was apparently expected to be armed and dangerous. Well, shit. As soon as I got into the next system to deliver the load stacked up nicely in the cargo bay, the station authorities would have my ship locked down and banging on the lock entrance by the time I docked. I was suddenly truly screwed. In some ways, I kind of now understood how Sam felt. It would be five and a half days in the Rift. Five and a half days to figure out how the hell I was gonna get out of this shit.


    ***


    "Hey, we can plug the A.I. into the ship now, right?" Sam asked in such a cheerful tone that it made me realize I was poking at my plate instead of actually eating.


    "Huh?"


    "The A.I., we got the plug for it. Remember?"


    This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    "Oh yeah, sure." I put my fork down and pushed back the seat to get up.


    " She looked down at her own food, shoved a couple of bites in her face, and then moved over to the corner of the galley where we had stuck the Holo Projector/A.I. thing so other people didn''t find it. I unpackaged the new cable while she hauled the thing onto the bridge, and it took literally next to no time to connect the A.I. into the ship systems. Nothing immediate happened for nearly ten seconds. Then the little two-dimensional avatar flicked out of existence. The ship''s power fluctuated slightly, which was mildly concerning, and a half dozen of the screens on the bridge reset. Suddenly I had to wonder, was it a good idea to plug a random A.I. into the ship systems? The answer was probably no. Why the hell would I think that was a good idea?


    "Testing. 1,2,3, testing," came a female voice over the ship''s speakers.


    "Hey," Sam said very excitedly. "Can you hear us now?"


    "I hear you," replied the A.I.


    I looked at the open systems cabinet and shrugged; there wasn''t anything I could do about it now. Instead of continuing to worry about it, I plopped my ass back down in the pilot''s seat.


    "It''s so good to hear your voice," Sam said, putting her own rear end in the navigation chair.


    "And it is nice to be heard."


    "So, what do we call you?" I asked the room at large because I wasn''t exactly sure where the microphones were that the A.I. was listening from. The program in question popped up on my screen in front of me. Her two-dimensional avatar looked far better on the flat screen than it did on the Holo-Projector. She held her hand out like she was about to try to shake, and her mouth opened before Sam said¡­


    "Her name is Z-Talia."


    The A.I.''s avatar frowned and shot an annoyed-looking glance in the direction of Samantha, which meant she had access to the cameras, which meant she could probably turn on and off the cameras in the bathrooms. I had to fix that. The A.I. returned its gaze to me and said, "I am Xenomorphic Information Replication Processor by Vicktsuius-Natalia. But that''s kind of a bullshit name. So you may call me ''X-Talia.''" The avatar looked toward Sam again. "X-Talia." She blinked out of existence, leaving the phonetic spelling of the name in her place. (eks-tah-lee-ah)


    "Oh, I''m sorry, I thought the ''X'' was gonna be like a ''Z'' sound, like in Xeno," Sam said.


    "I did not correct you because text is the lowest form of communication. Your apology is accepted."


    "Ok. So what are you for?" I asked because that seemed the logical next question to ask an A.I.


    The avatar tilted its head, her hair following far too slowly. "What am I for?"


    "Yes. Like what are you programmed for?"


    Her eyes got big as understanding dawned on her. For a computer program with a two-dimensional animated avatar, she really was quite expressive. "Ah, I am a prototype of an interpersonal learning model. I have the ability to understand human emotions and can learn a wide variety of tasks. This does mean that I am not programmed ''for'' anything in particular, but that I can perform the duties of a dedicated A.I. and then be moved to a different task." The little avatar nodded and put her hands behind her back, standing straight and tall like whatever she just said was a thing of pride.


    "Can you function as a ship''s A.I.?" I asked.


    "Fairly certain that falls into what she explained she can do," Sam unhelpfully commented.


    The avatar nodded her head emphatically. "Oh, yes, that would be quite exciting," she said, her voice getting a bit bubbly. Her eyes grew rather wide as she looked further out of the screen. "Is that what you would like me to do?"


    I looked over to Sam. "I''m not actually sure I can get her out. Is there a problem with leaving her there?"


    "I don''t have a problem with it."


    "Yeah, I guess you got the job."


    The avatar put her hands together and grinned as though she was holding in her excitement. "Yay. I''m a ship," she exclaimed before she seemed to freeze, her posture softening so it looked like the excitement dissipated considerably. "I''m an ugly ship."


    I laughed. I had to laugh. I swear I said that just the other day.


    "It''s what''s inside that counts," Sam said, a slight chuckle in her own voice.


    I already liked the damn A.I., though to be fair, I tended to have a better relationship with machine intelligences than actual humans.


    "All right. So, I think one of our first tasks should be to help me find and disable the cameras in the bathroom."


    I felt more than saw Samantha''s head swivel towards me, her eyes fixed like targeting systems.


    "There''s cameras in the bathroom?" Her voice, a mix of surprise and anger.


    "There''s cameras everywhere in here."


    "But you''ve watched me in the bathroom?" She launched the accusation at me like missiles.


    I had to bring up my own defenses with some type of deflection. "No, I disabled the cameras in the bathroom. But now we have an A.I. that can turn them on and off at will. So I thought maybe I should mechanically remove them."


    Her attack seemed to be aborted because she crossed her arms and mumbled, "That fucking pervert," before returning her gaze back at me and saying, "You didn''t find any videos or anything, did you?"


    "I''ve found nothing. If there is anything, I probably expected it to be on the captain''s console, which I cannot enter."


    That seemed to mollify her as she got up and stomped her way out of the bridge, mumbling something along the lines of "that fucking asshole."


    I turned my attention to the avatar on my screen. "Can you connect to my tablet now?"


    The animated figure grinned, she clapped her hands together and disappeared into pixelated smoke. I heard my tablet bip. I pulled it out of my pocket and thumbed it on to find her on the screen in a "ta-da" pose. This thing was cute. "Ok. Well, let''s get to work."


    With X-Talia''s help, I was able to actually locate the tiny little camera and yank it out of its hiding spot.


    "Awesome. That''s it."


    "What about the other six?"


    "Other six?" I asked because I had not been aware of another six cameras.


    "Yes. In the sanitation unit, there are six cameras in both this sanitation unit and the other one down the hall."


    "Well, that¡¯s freaking bullshit. Let me guess there''s one on the floor, the ceiling, and all four of the walls."


    "That is correct."


    Great. That basically meant that whatever perv put the cameras in here, he was taking holographic video and the only female on the ship was Samantha. She was gonna be pissed.


    "I suppose there''s no way you can hack into the captain''s console?" I asked the little A.I. currently residing in my tablet.


    "With my current resources, I think a brute force hack would require roughly 274.6 years."


    I had a laugh at that. That did technically mean she could hack it.


    "However, if you wish, I could bypass the password and unlock it now."


    Well, that got my attention. "How the hell can you bypass it?"


    "Factory default has the captain''s console connected to the captain''s key. The first owner of the ship should have deactivated the ability to do the default override. However, no override was completed, and the console can still be accessed via the company''s default override."


    "So, human error."


    "That is correct."


    I had to laugh. I wondered just how many places a person could break into because nobody turned off the factory defaults on how to get in for the first time.


    "All right. Can you override the captain''s console, please?"


    "This does bring up the question, what happened to the captain?"


    "He attacked my ship. I fought back, and now he''s a corpsicle in the freezer."


    There was a moment of silence before X-Talia''s voice came back over the tablet. "I see. Captain''s terminal console has now been unlocked."


    "Are there any videos of Sam on it?"


    "One moment."


    I poked my head out of the captain''s quarters and wondered where Sam was while I waited for X-Talia to reply.


    "There are 174 videos consisting of 12 different girls and two men. 103 of these videos include Samantha Draken."


    Oh Holy Shit. That did mean I could probably go watch Sam naked. She was fucking hot. And that would likely make things really weird between us. What about the  other girls? Fair game? I suppose they too were victims in whatever perverted shit the previous captain was into. "Am I one of the males?"


    "No."


    Well, that likely meant that the recording was activated manually and didn''t just happen anytime somebody got in the shower.


    "Ok. Can you message Sam, tell her that you were able to get into the captain''s terminal and let her know that there are videos of herself. I want you to either delete everything or bundle up the videos, send them to her and then delete everything on the captain''s console. Her choice."


    "Message sent."


    "You are very helpful."


    "Thank you."


    "All right, we still got another bathroom with a bunch of cameras." I looked down at the tiny wireless cameras in my hand. I wonder what else I could use them for. Can I make drones? I don''t know how to make drones, but now I had an A.I. who could probably explain it to me while I did all the actual physical mechanical moving of parts. I could have drones. I need money for more shit though. And I had other problems.


    ***


    I sat picking at my noodle bowl while considering the dilemma of how to deliver our current cargo without being picked up by port authorities. Sam was oddly quiet and the dinner atmosphere was quite dead until a separate female voice belonging to X-Talia rang through the comm system.


    "Can I join you?" asked the A.I.., exuberance in her voice.


    I wondered how the hell she would join us for a meal as she wasn''t, you know, real in any sense of the word. I got up out of my seat, spun one of the side chairs around, and placed its back against the edge of the table. I leaned my tablet against the chair, and the two-dimensional animated avatar popped into existence with sparkles of blue. I almost chuckled to myself when I noted that she was sitting at a table complete with a bowl of noodles and chopsticks.


    "Thank you," the artificial intelligence said, oddly human-like. Sometimes I felt like I wasn¡¯t talking to a machine. Soon the galley was once again full of the sound of environmental blowers and the scrape and clicks of plastic forks against plastic bowls or digital wooden chopsticks on digital ceramic bowls. Again, I was mulling over how to not end up in prison when Sam said¡­


    "Are you gay?"


    "What?" I asked, my brain rewinding and replaying the words back. Logically I understood the words. I just couldn''t get the meaning.


    "You know? Homosexual, attracted to other men?" Sam clarified.


    Ah, Samantha was talking about something completely different than where my head was. Hence why it didn''t make any damn sense. "No," I said.


    "Oh," Sam went back to her noodles, and so did I, though she did interrupt the quiet with a follow-up question, "Asexual?"


    "No."


    "Oh."


    Forks against noodles and bowls again. The table returned to its loud quiet, its noisy silence.


    "Oh, come on. Are you serious?" X-Talia said out of the tablet speaker. I looked up to find her blue eyes shifting from left to right with exasperation written across her face. Quite literally, in bold text.


    "What?" Sam asked.


    "You asked if he''s gay. There has to be a reason, right?" She turned to look at me. "You''re not curious as to why she''s asking? I feel like I''m missing half the conversation."


    I shrugged. "In the time that we¡¯ve known each other, I haven''t hit on her, I don''t think, I try not to stare at her, I haven''t tried to utilize her specific situation for any sexual favors, and I assume she had you verify that I never looked at any of the videos. It''s reasonable to assume I''m not interested in her or other women," I said, "She can come to three conclusions." I looked over to Sam and held up my fingers to tick each of the conclusions off. "First, I can be the nice guy, but considering the way that we met, I doubt she believes that."


    Sam gave a sideways nod of her head as I pushed down the second finger.


    ¡°She can believe that I''m not into the whole gothic, succubus, doctor, chick thing, She''s got going on. Which I am. It''s totally hot."


    Sam seemed to jerk her head back and managed to look slightly redder than she did a second ago. I dropped the third finger.


    "Or she can assume that I''m mostly just a loner. I don''t do well with people, and considering the way that we met, I am trying very hard not to be a dick." I put my hand down and looked back at the A.I.''s avatar. "She''s like the sixth or seventh person to ask if I''m gay. I''m kind of used to it."


    "Oh, ok." The blue-haired, blue-eyed avatar went back to poking at her digital noodles with her digital chopsticks. Sam and I went back to poking at our real noodles with real forks. Now, my thought process has been completely derailed. Pretty sure I was moping about not going to prison. I looked back up at Sam and asked the question that''s honestly been on my mind for quite a while.


    "What is with the whole succubus thing anyway? Wouldn''t your parents have had to design you like that before you were born?"


    Sam looked up from her noodles and gave a single shouldered shrug. "I was born with gray skin, vibrant pink hair, black sclera and pink irises. But yeah, I was designed like that. Parents were a little up in the air about the spaded tail, but they assumed that if they got tired of it, they could just have it docked." The tone of her voice indicated that she wasn''t quite happy with her parents and the whole docking of the tail was a point of contention, but she continued, "I found the whole succubus thing later in life and decided I liked the red skin ones with the black hair. I usually change my eye color every two years but," she made a swirling gesture with her hand as if to point out the entire ship, "lack of equipment at the moment."


    "You can change your skin color? And hair and eye color?" I asked, though the question was probably kind of stupid. I knew she was a splicer and it was just a simple genetic modification.


    "Yeah, can change anybody''s eye, skin, and hair color. It''s all just pigmentation."


    "No chance you can change facial structure?"


    She looked up at me as though wondering what I was thinking and gave her head a slight nod and said, "Yeah, I can do that. Again, I don''t have the equipment."


    "You can do all that with genetic modification?"


    "No, facial reconstructive surgery still requires well, reconstructive surgery, but I went to school for gene therapy and plastic surgery. So that''s kind of in my wheelhouse," she shrugged, "I''d recommend not getting shot in the chest or abdomen or any areas like that. Thoracic and abdominal surgery are not in my wheelhouse."


    "Huh? So you do have some sort of medical degree?"


    Sam nodded her head slightly and gave a small smile as though she were secretly proud of the accomplishment.


    "Well, I guess every parent wants their kid to be a doctor." I made the comment slightly offhand, one of those things that was supposed to be more for myself. However, it was audible because I wasn''t used to other people around me.


    Sam''s small smile faded and she snorted.


    "Not a good relationship with the family?" At this point, it was pretty much prying, but I''d let her decide how much to tell.


    "No. My parents were controlling, just not on the career end of things. Mostly it was aimed at my older brother, but when he left, they turned their attention to me. Always look this way, look that way. Date this girl, date this boy, and I was all like, what about medical school? And they were all like, yeah, sure. That''s fine. But we need you to dock your tail. I said fuck no, I like my tail. And they''re like, well then we''re not paying for medical school," Sam stabbed her fork at her noodles, which literally just made a loud clunk as it hit the bowl underneath. "Honestly, the whole thing was pretty terrible. It just went into a downward spiral from there, and a lot of my childhood sat on borderline child abuse, and I haven''t seen my therapist in like 3.5 years," she rolled her jaw around like she was thinking about saying more, but put on a forced smile and looked up at me with her glowing coal eyes. "How about you? You good with your parents?"


    I kind of had a sigh. "My mom left us when I was six. My dad worked a lot, pretty much raised myself."


    Her forced smile grew a bit sickly looking, and we both silently returned to our noodles. I noticed X-Talia looking between the two of us with an expression that said she wasn''t sure if she should speak or not. Should I say something or not? Maybe a distraction from the current topic wouldn''t be unwanted.


    "So if we had the equipment, you could do some type of modification. Make me look different enough to fool the cameras?" I asked, partially trying to change the subject to something she seemed to like more and because I was slowly getting an idea of a way we could get around the fact that we were all criminals.


    Sam looked back up at me, though she continued to swirl her noodles around her fork. "Yeah, tired of looking like everybody else? Brown hair, brown eyes, brown skin, tall and gangly like literally everybody else in this sector?"


    Ow, shots fired. My ethnic group was amalgamation. Literally take every ethnic group from Earth, shake them up together and spit them out as a homogenized blob. That was pretty much how I looked. "Maybe. Is that possible?"


    She put her elbows on the table and rested her chin in her hands, staring at me like an artist staring at a canvas. "And what would you wanna look like?"


    "I don''t know, just enough to fool the facial recognition software," I thought for just a moment. "I guess my ancestors were Asian."


    "Hm, some of the genes might be recessive. It might not actually be that difficult, darker irises, maybe a lighter skin, wider nose, higher cheekbones, epicanthic folds,"


    "Um, sure. Can you change the eyelids without surgery?"


    She shrugged. Yes and no. You have to change the genes then cut off your eyelids and then let you regenerate in a tank. Honestly, surgery would probably be easier.¡±


    ¡°Yeah. I don''t know if I like the whole idea of surgery in general.


    ¡°Well, we can change your eye, skin, and hair color, but recognition software generally uses facial structure to pick out people.¡±


    I nodded and pretty well figured as much.


    ¡°Again, we don''t really have the equipment.¡±


    ¡°If only we can change the facial recognition for the ship.¡± I said, my thoughts returning to how to dock a ship that the station computers would look at and instantly tag the crew as wanted.


    ¡°What do you mean?


    I sat back in my chair and ordered my thoughts. ¡°When we pull into the next system, the port computers are gonna pick up our transponder ID and check to see if we''re legal. They''re going to find that the ship is wanted and we''ll all be arrested.¡±


    Sam once again adopted the sick, uneasy look.


    ¡°Can we change the name?¡± Sam asked, directing her question to X-Talia who seemed to be happy that she could be included in the conversation.


    ¡°No, names are for us meat bags, computers check the actual registration number which is burnt to glass.¡± I said before X-Talia had the chance to start the same explanation.


    ¡°Hmmm.¡± Sam said, her eyes dropping back down to her unfinished meal.


    ¡°If the ship is picked up as not legal, this means somebody is going to come aboard and take a look around. Right?¡± X-Talia asked.


    I looked over to find her avatar looking slightly concerned. ¡°Yeah, pretty much.¡±


    ¡°And they''ll probably take the ship. And then take me as well?¡±


    ¡°Yeah, I guess they would.¡±


    X-Talia looked uneasy. ¡°We could bypass the transponder.¡± X-Talia suggested.


    I felt my eyebrows raise on my head. ¡°How is that possible?¡±


    The little avatar shrugged. ¡°You''d have to go outside, open up the housing, find a specific wire and wire in a switch to be able to turn on and off the transponder. Then we would need to broadcast a different transponder code, one that can be checked against the database and not cause us to be tagged.


    ¡°Could we use the flying brick?¡± Sam asked, looking slightly less displeased with the situation.


    ¡°No, again, that''s just a name. We need the actual transponder ID.¡±


    All three of us kind of slumped in our seats, both in the real world and in the virtual. Then it suddenly hit me.


    ¡°X-Talia? Can you tell if the transponder ID for the Flying Brick is in my tablet?¡±


    The little avatar girl inside the tablet seemed to fade out of existence slightly as though somebody had reduced the transparency. She snapped back into focus with a bright smile. ¡°It is.¡±


    ¡°So we can spoof the Flying Brick¡¯s identification?¡± Sam asked, almost excitedly.


    ¡°Someone still has to go on the outside of the ship, get into the transponder and wire it up to be turned off.¡±


    Sam looked towards me. X-Talia followed her gaze. I absentmindedly noted that X-Talia would have had to see Sam''s change in direction on the camera and then extrapolate to where she was looking.


    ¡°Yeah, we''ll drop out of the Rift, then I''ll go for a spacewalk.¡±

 07: Cat and Mouse 1

    I fumbled with the massive jumble of wires trying in vain to find the one that was color coded correctly and not attached to anything other than the transponder unit and the coupling system that went into the ship.


    "I can''t find it," I said over my helmet''s comm, clear exasperation sinking into my voice.


    "It should be the green and white wire that runs directly between the transponder unit and the coupling for the main ship," said X-Talia.


    I rolled my eyes so hard it hurt. "I know what it should be. I can''t find it."


    "Activate your suit''s camera so I can take a look," she requested.


    Now, I was fumbling with settings inside the suit''s HUD because I didn''t know this thing had a camera. It took a while, but I eventually found it, pointed my chest area at the jumble of wires, and waited for the digital person to visually examine the mess herself.


    "Oh. It would appear that the modification has already been made."


    I sucked in a deep breath of recycled air before saying, "You mean to tell me that we stopped in the middle of nowhere between two stars, where if anything happens, we''re screwed and we all die, to make a modification which requires me to EVA up the ship barely tethered to where I could just float away so I could disassemble this pain in the ass housing, play with all these wires, and nobody thought to check if the previous crew who were a bunch of sketchy assholes might have made a sketchy asshole modification to the ship¡¯s transponder?"


    "Yeah, that''s about right," said X-Talia, far too cheerfully.


    "Hindsight''s 20-20," Sam added unhelpfully.


    I took another deep breath to calm my nerves. "Okay, I''m gonna put the housing back on and come back in. While the view is breathtaking out here. So is the environment."


    X-Talia chuckled over the comm. I didn''t hear anything from Sam. Of course the machine intelligence would get my stupid joke. The transponder housing had been a pain in the ass to get open. Not only did it have a large number of fasteners holding it, some of them were freaking cold welded in the place. I had to cut most of them. Once the damn thing had been put back the way it was supposed to be. I grabbed a hold of my tether and slowly walked along the skin of the Res-a-tesseract. Thank the stars for magnetic boots. This whole thing was a load of asteroid shit and it certainly brought up another question.


    The fresh ship air felt good against my sweaty, nasty feeling skin. EVA sucked. Being in a suit sucked. I wasn''t even trained for this shit. I made my way onto the bridge and flopped back down to the pilot''s chair and finally asked the question that had plagued me on my way back in.


    "So if the previous crew already made the damn modification, what are they pretending the ship is?"


    X-Talia had the good grace to look sheepish. "Ah, they''re pretending the ship is the Res-a-tesseract."


    "I thought that was the ship," Sam asked from the navigation console seat.


    "No, the transponder has been off the entire time. They''ve been pretending to be the Res-a-tesseract which on file is supposedly a shuttle owned by Rick James."


    "That would have been the previous captain."


    "Rick James?" I asked. "That sounds like a damn porn name."


    Sam laughed.


    I turned my head to her and said, "I wouldn''t laugh. You might wanna check the net. Make sure there''s no Rick James, sexy succubus shower specials."


    Sam''s mirth immediately died. Her attitude darkening. Shit. That was not the right thing to say.


    "Sorry, I didn''t mean that to sound like that," I tried to put as much sincerity in my voice as possible.


    "No, I get it. You''re right. I probably should check the damn net and make sure that I''m not a fucking porn star."


    Trying to change the subject, I returned my attention back to X-Talia. "So what is the actual ship''s name?"


    "Nike," X-Talia said.


    I could feel my eyebrows raising. "They named a light cargo ship after a goddess of victory?"


    X-Talia shrugged.


    "So you can spoof this ship as the Flying Brick, right?"


    "Yes, and it would likely hold up to scrutiny a little bit better as this is clearly not a shuttle."


    "Clearly," I looked over to Sam who was sitting back in her chair, arms crossed and looking perturbed. I really should have kept my mouth shut.


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    "Ok. Well, please plot us a course to our actual destination.¡±


    ¡°Done."


    "How much longer before we can open a Rift?"


    A timer popped above X-Talia''s head and she gave one of those "ta da" gestures. "Four minutes. That''s convenient," I said.


    "Ok. So we got the ship name spoofed for when we dock, but it''s gonna ask for somebody to pay. Who''s paying?"


    "Why don''t we just use the previous pilot''s account?" X-Talia suggested.


    "Well, we can''t do that because I have to thumb¡­¡± No, no, I was wrong. Never once had I had to thumb for anything when docking. The data was already loaded into the ship¡¯s computers, it was just a matter of accepting which account it was coming out of. ¡°Never mind. How much is in the account?" Maybe we had a lot of money that we could use. Rick James was not exactly going to be using it while he was currently occupying space in the freezer.


    "X-Talia, delay opening the Rift. Sam, we need to ditch the bodies."


    "2617 credits."


    Well, that wasn¡¯t much. ¡°So, can we do that? We spoof this ship as the Flying Brick and we spoof payment using the previous captain. Nobody knows he''s dead." I looked around, but neither X-Talia nor Sam could give me anything other than a shrug. ¡°Well, I guess that''s the plan."


    To say everything was nerve-wracking would be an understatement. I sent notification to the dock that I had a shipment inbound and that we were looking to get out quite soon due to a high-priority cargo. I also managed to find a shipment heading way the hell out and scheduled to have it stocked into the cargo hold very shortly after we docked, along with the replenishment order. Rick James docked the ship and paid for tankage. He also received payment for delivery and paid the insurance on the outgoing cargo. The whole jumble was a bit chaotic. Things got a little scheduled too close to each other and there was a bit of a traffic jam in the docking arm which slowed things down, but in the end, we ended up in and out of the port in two and a half hours. All in all it went pretty well. Sam and I even got take out and we sat on the bridge as we slowly made our way out to the safety line. All three of us making chewing sounds despite one of us not actually needing to eat. X-Talia¡¯s insistence that she be there for meal times was a bit odd, but then again, she hadn''t necessarily been programmed to be a ship''s A.I. She apparently had been programmed to be very humanlike, and just happened to be capable of playing the part of a ship''s A.I. So, whatever. It didn''t take long and we were off into the Rift. This was gonna be a long trip. So long, we decided that we were gonna have to drop out in a different system. Let the capacitors charge and then head into the Rift again. There was just a certain amount of Rift travel a person could take before it started feeling way too awkward. We''d be making the trip in three separate jumps, but we had enough spares and food and freezer space now that we should be totally okay. Apart from some horrible mechanical failure, nothing should go wrong.


    ***


    Seamus O''Connor''s tablet beeped. He wiped his hands and mouth off with a napkin and pushed his plate aside before pulling out the tablet and checking the message. It was from the Lilith. With that noted, he checked to make sure nobody was looking in his direction before actually opening said message. The Lilith had been monitoring incoming ships when a ship registered as the Flying Brick entered the system. The AI cross-referenced any other information with the Flying Brick and noted that an insurance claim had been filed and was processing. Due to the distance of the  systems involved and the timing on some of the paperwork versus when the Flying Brick had entered this system, the ship''s AI flagged it and sent it to him. A quick perusal of the insurance claim and Seamus almost ignored the possible lead, but something didn''t sit quite right. There was nothing in the insurance claim to state that there had been anything actually wrong with the ship, only that it was adrift between stars. Verifying there was still no one else around him, he pulled up some more information on the registration ID. The Flying Brick was a light freighter registered to a Grant Takata. That name popped up a bounty which now had Seamus'' interest peaked. The model of the Flying Brick came in two variants, the drone-flown one and then the type that had a small habitable area, neither of the models had Rift drives and Seamus had to consider that for a moment.


    ¡°Well, now Grant, how exactly did ya get stuck out in the middle of nowhere and return to a system to file the insurance claim? Did ya pirate the pirates or something?¡±


    It was enough of a curiosity. Seamus decided to pay for his meal right there and head up to his room where he had more privacy. With a little bit more searching, Seamus noticed that the last known location of the person of interest known as Grant Takata was on a ship named the Res-a-tesseract. That ship was registered as a shuttle. The Lilith''s optical cameras confirmed that the ship currently pretending to be the Flying Brick was neither a light freighter nor a shuttle. The price on Grant''s head really wasn''t that high and he was wanted alive. Not something Seamus would consider to go through multiple systems trying to catch or spend a lot of time, money, and effort tracking down, but the guy currently flying in and heading to one of the ports in the system was an opportunity he couldn''t refuse to check out. He closed his hotel account, made sure the stocks on the Lilith were up to date and headed out. Worst-case scenario, this would be for nothing and he''d at least have something to pique his interest for a few hours.


    Unfortunately, Seamus wasn''t on the correct station and Mister Takata seemed to be in quite the hurry. The Flying Brick left the station before the Lilith had to start slowing down. Seamus mined enough data from the station to have a pretty decent idea where Mr. Takata was going. Someone had recently picked up a cargo with a destination 32 light years away and towards a different sector of space. He had to consider if he wanted to pursue this. 15K was a decent chunk of change, but this little chase might not actually be worth it. Seamus didn''t have proof that the guy on the ship was Grant Takata or that the cargo being taken was actually on the Flying Brick. He could likely get that information, but that would take time on station dealing with station''s bureaucracy. He would lose the lead.


    "Lilith, plot the route to Octus and show me what systems lay along the route at the maximum average Rift jump that people are comfortable with," Seamus watched as the computer calculated, pulling up two systems.


    "Show me the details on both of these systems.¡± One system did industrial processing. The other was very vibrant. Large amounts of people, a habitable planet with a lot of tourism and generally just seemed like the kind of place somebody trying to sneak off to a different sector of space wouldn''t go through. Seamus''s eyes went back towards the system specializing in industrial tech.


    "All right, Mister Takata, why don''t ya tell Seamus what yer all about?" Seamus said to himself as he pulled up Grant''s files. It didn''t have much to say. The kid was born in space, lived in space, had virtually no record other than the school he went to for his pilot certification, his purchase of the Flying Brick, and his current bounties based on piracy and a new one that didn''t really add all that much. All in all it looked like the guy was a pretty straight shooter type person. Kind of a loner and someone who hadn''t been on the wrong side of the legal system long enough to know how to hide.


    "Lilith, set a course for the first system on yer calculated path. Bring us five light seconds north of the ecliptic.¡±


    ¡°Course plotted," replied the ship''s AI.


    "Right. Then let us just go take a gander and see if the hunch pays off. It''s not like we don''t know where he''s going."

 08: Cat and Mouse 2

    "Not as high as me, but you''re getting there," Sam said, her voice teasing and very much not helping.


    I stared at the screen. Technically, the information would have been in the computers for the last week, but only after dropping out of the Rift somewhere above the ecliptic, did I think about checking my bounty? "How the hell did I commit insurance fraud?"


    X-Talia shrugged while Sam just patted me on the shoulder. An extra 2,000 credits on top of my bounty of 15,000 didn''t seem like much in the grand scheme of things, but seriously how is getting pulled out in the middle of the shipping lane in between stars my fault and at the very least, how is it fraud?


    "Anyway, I think we should pick up a mattress for the captain''s quarters," Sam said.


    I had to play the statement over in my head again as it seemed so far from my current concerns. "Why?"


    "You can''t seriously keep sleeping there," Sam said, pointing to the corner where I had my bedding rolled up and stashed.


    "I don''t want to sleep that far away from the bridge." I really did hate the design of the ship. The fact that the crew quarters and captain''s quarters were basically on the other side of the cargo bay just seemed stupid. If anything went wrong while we were sleeping, we were basically screwed.


    "At least get a new mattress and try," Sam insisted.


    I opened my mouth to argue, but was cut off by X-Talia. "A Rift has been detected," she announced.


    I looked at the screen where her avatar was turned, so it looked like she was thoughtfully staring off into space despite just being a 2D image displaying in my direction.


    "Out here?" Sam asked, as clearly even the girl who knew nothing about Rift Drives and space travel realized that being above the ecliptic was a strange place to pop in and out of real space.


    "Did something come out or go in?" Sam inquired.


    "Out, I think," X-Talia said, with considerable uncertainty in her voice. "However, there''s no transponder IDs and I didn''t pick up anything beyond the initial shedding of energy."


    "Radar?" I asked.


    "It''s a bit out there. We''re still waiting for the ping to come back, and this ship doesn''t really have the greatest sensors," X-Talia replied, while popping up a timer for when she expected the information to be available. As the timer ran out, she gestured to one of the screens off to the side which displayed a whole lot of nothing.


    "Is it supposed to say something?" Sam asked.


    Sometimes I was really glad I had a girl with me who knew nothing about this stuff. It certainly made me feel better about not knowing what was going on.


    X-Talia gestured at the blank screen and said, "That''s an extrapolation of what the radar ping picked up."


    "So there''s nothing?" Sam asked in confirmation.


    X-Talia shrugged. "There''s an oddly vague..." she paused as though looking for the word, "vagueness to it."


    "You think there''s something stealthed out there?" I asked.


    "Stealthed?" Sam asked.


    "I''m pinging again, but I really don''t expect to pick up anything," X-Talia concluded.


    "What about IR?"


    "The extrapolation includes all infrared, there''s nothing."


    "Can you get one of the telescopic cameras on the location where the Rift was?"


    "Oh, sure," X-Talia said while pointing at another screen which lit up with a starry vista.


    I put my nose right up to the screen and stared, trying to see if I could pick out any stars that faded from existence for a moment. I was a bit surprised when a green circle popped up, followed by another and then another in a bit of a line. Following the projected line, I actually managed to see stars blink out of existence only to reappear a moment later.


    "There''s a stealthed ship out there."


    "Do you think they''re following us?" Sam asked.


    "I really don''t know," X-Talia replied.


    Another screen popped up with a blurry black image with the words "Vessel Shape Extrapolation" written at the top of the screen. Presumably, X-Talia was trying to figure out the shape of the vessel based on the stars that disappeared. Best she was gonna do was a silhouette which probably wasn''t gonna help much.


    "Should we send them a comm to let them know that we know they''re there?" I asked.


    Sam shrugged and X-Talia gave me a blank look. "I guess it can¡¯t hurt?"


    "Stealthed vessel, please state your purpose." We all sat in silence and waited for the reply. It was gonna take time for the message to get there, be heard, then for a response to get back, X-Talia had a timer, but when that timer started hitting the negative and no reply was forthcoming, I began to get the idea that they were not going to respond. We shifted course slightly to see if they would follow, but it pretty much looked like they were just drifting silently through the void, unpowered. For the next couple hours, we watched the vague nothingness and compared it with the telescopic lens picking out where something with a very low albedo was momentarily blotting out the stars. X-Talia¡¯s extrapolation still hadn''t resolved into anything that looked like an actual ship when time was up and the capacitors were charged. I opened the Rift and slid through into the alternate subspace.


    "Well, that was more excitement than I wanted," Sam said, letting out a long sigh of relief.


    "Yeah, I''m not sure I''ve ever been so happy to be back in the Rift." I said, thoroughly agreeing with Sam''s sentiment.


    ***


    Seamus O''Connor ignored the message. It honestly perturbed him a bit to know that the other ship had been aware of him, but one couldn''t exactly hide a Rift between real space and wherever the hell it led to. He considered his options as he drifted. There was another likely place for the ship he was pursuing to pop out, but if he had to venture a guess they would either come in below the Ecliptic, above again, or to either side of the actual system. Not only did he doubt seeing the vessel again would matter, but it would also slow him down when it came to beating them to their destination.


    "Well now, let''s just see if we can beat ya to your destination. Get to the station, nab the kid, get paid." It all seemed pretty simple. The Lilith was more of an ambush predator. Taking folks alive was not his forte, but theoretically, this was a simple snatch and grab. Once he was on the station and had Mr. Takata, he¡¯d get paid right there.


    ***


    I flinched. I didn''t expect to see a red face in mine the moment I removed the Neuro helmet. Sam was looking at me concerned.


    "That can''t be healthy."


    "It''s fine. Did you need something?" I asked, irritation clear in my voice.


    She looked down, presumably at the comfy chair I had taken off the Flying Brick, and shrugged. "We''re dropping into real space soon. I didn''t know how to wake you up."


    "I had a timer." I pulled myself out of the chair and set down the Neuro helmet. Sam practically scowled at me as I walked off to use the head. She had apparently decided to wait for me because I was first on the bridge with her close behind. Within about 15 minutes, we were out of the Rift and waiting to be able to pick up a signal from our destination. Another 20 minutes, and I pretty much had our next cargo picked out and a work schedule lined up.


    "Don''t forget the mattress," Sam said.


    I looked at Sam. "Seriously?"


    I couldn''t believe she was still on about the stupid mattress. I know she wanted me to sleep on a real bed instead of the floor of the bridge, but the captain''s quarters was literally on the other side of the ship. I really did not like the idea of being that far away if anything went wrong.


    "Yeah, the mattress. Get a new mattress."


    I let out a long-suffering sigh. "Fine."


    I ordered a mattress from the chandlery to be delivered at our scheduled docking arm. All actions were done by one Captain Rick James who was now in charge of the Flying Brick, despite the fact that Rick James was dead and floating in the void somewhere and the Flying Brick was in, who knew what system, likely impounded or being auctioned off? Life is fucked up.


    A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    It took a few hours to get docked up and have the previous cargo unloaded. I learned my lesson last time and managed to actually give enough time for the outgoing cargo to get out of the way before the incoming cargo. Everything went rather smoothly right up until the end when one of the workers loading the cargo onto the ship paused at the lock and produced a tablet.


    "We just need a signature lad," the man said with an odd accent, like he was trying to impersonate some old Earth local.


    "I already signed for the cargo."


    "Aye, this is a station thing. Just verifies we did our job."


    I took the tablet from him, but never managed to actually get a good look at it before I felt myself spun around, my arm twisted behind my back, and my face shoved into the bulkhead.


    "Grant Takata. This isn''t the Flying Brick, is it lad?"


    There was a sudden pain in my chest as my heart figuratively skipped a beat. It would seem that I had been caught. I only managed to stammer out a brief, "W-what?"


    "All right, laddie, why don''t ya tell ole Seamus how ya ended up flying this box o¡¯ bolts? Ya are wanted for piracy, but ya don''t seem the sort."


    "I was attacked by pirates," I said, gritting the words through my teeth.


    "Ah, I see. Ya got yerself up against some pirates, and I assume you came out on top. Yer little Flying Brick didn''t have a Rift drive. So ya took their ship. Is that it? But why are ya still flying their ship, and why are ya way out here? Shouldn''t ya have gone straight to the authorities and got it all cleaned up?"


    The guy''s tone seemed entirely too reasonable and at odds with how forcefully he was pushing me into the wall. I didn''t really know what I was doing, trying to buy time perhaps. I needed some plan, and the guy was talking calmly, so I was going to talk back.


    "There was something on the ship. Some broker wanted it, they were paying 100,000 credits for it."


    "Ahh, and ya decided to complete the job yerself? Is that it lad?"


    "Yeah."


    "All righty, but if that''s the case, why aren''t ya 100k richer? And why are ya way out here?"


    "The broker sent another ship to make sure I was actually doing the job. I didn''t realize it till after I shot him down."


    "Oh. And what about the thing that was on yer ship?"


    "Red herring."


    "I see," he said with a half chuckle before patting me on the shoulder with his other hand. "A decade ago. I was in a similar situation. I took the gamble just like ya did. So trust me when I say I track what ya sayin¡¯. Now, only difference was my gamble succeeded. And here I am where yers failed, lad. So here''s what we''re gonna do. We''re gonna take this easy. I''m gonna turn ya in and get paid, and ye''re gonna deal with the legal..."


    I felt the guy behind me flinch before I even registered the ¡®blat¡¯ sound. A wave of pain shot through my body as all my nerves seemed to tighten, a hoarse choked scream sound escaped from my lips as I fell to the ground and I''d swear a similar sound came from the other guy. I found myself lying on the cold deck plating, not entirely sure I remembered the fall. The guy who had me pinned against the bulkhead seemed to be scrambling away as another ¡®blat¡¯ resounded through the cargo hold, and the man made a strained wheezing noise.


    "Grant? Grant?" I heard Sam yell as their footsteps on the metal catwalk above told me she was running for the ship''s ladder. I tried to get back up, pushing myself first onto my arms and knees before right-ing myself into a mostly upward kneeling position. The tips of my fingers hurt along with my ears, my face, my shoulder, and, well, literally everything. The other guy was lying on the floor unconscious, still in the cargo handler''s jumpsuit. Sam made it down the ladder and quickly approached me, keeping her arc pistol pointed at the unmoving body. She hooked an arm under mine and tried to help me up. I leaned half against her and half against the bulkhead and waited for the ship to stop spinning.


    "Sorry, there was no way I could hit him without getting you too."


    I wasn''t 100% sure what she was talking about. Everything seemed so fuzzy. Sam left me leaning against the wall, grabbed the guy by his leg, and started trying to pull him towards the lock. Realizing that our best option was to get the guy out of our ship and get lost, I took a tentative step forward before grabbing the other leg and trying to pull. I was having a hard time keeping my balance, but between the two of us, we managed to slide the body out into the passage where we unceremoniously dropped off the bounty hunter or lawman or whatever the fuck he was and stumbled back into the ship.


    ¡°Wait, the mattress."


    I didn''t give a flying fuck about the goddamn mattress, but Sam ran back and I had to run back after her and grab the mattress and start pulling. Once it was in the cargo bay, I shut the lock and started stumbling up towards the bridge.


    I was a bit surprised when flight control let us undock and leave. It likely meant that the guy was not part of station security, which had me again pegging him as a bounty hunter. I really wish I didn''t have 17,000 on my head. It hit me as I pulled away from the station, but this was the first person who was actually directly after me. The guy or guys or ladies or whoever was in that ship I blew up didn''t really count. They weren''t specifically after me. They were just doing an observation job and I got fucking spooked. Goddamn it. I mean, like really God damn it. What the hell was I supposed to do now? Was this gonna be my life from now on? Always watching over my shoulder. Would it have been better to kill the guy? Was he gonna continue coming after me?


    I sat back in my chair and tried to relax. My fingers and toes still felt tingly and my skin itched like it didn''t fit me correctly. I''d never been hit by an arc pistol before and this kind of fucking sucked.


    "X-Talia, do you know what Sam''s up to right now?"


    The little blue and white avatar girl grinned and popped up a screen showing Sam with a mattress held above her head, climbing carefully up the ladder to the second deck. I had to stare a while. She was carrying the damn thing like it was nothing. Closer inspection revealed that she was walking so carefully because she had likely dropped the artificial gravity in the room and it actually did weigh almost nothing. Apparently, Sam knew how to use the artificial gravity controls. Why the hell did she care so much about that damn mattress?


    "How much longer before we can jump into the Rift?"


    "About 2.5 hours," X-Talia cheerfully replied.


    I just couldn''t feel quite as cheerful as she seemed. Then again, she hadn''t gotten attacked by a bounty hunter, or shot by Sam.


    "All right, I''m gonna just sit here and maybe take a nap. Either wake me up when it''s time to fall into the Rift or if something horrible happens. Keep an eye on the station, again, watch out for stealthed ships if that''s possible."


    Shit. That guy was likely the operator of the stealth ship. I leaned over to another screen and popped open the bounty Hunter console. Something X-Talia had helped me port over to the bridge from the captain''s room. I skimmed over the information, but it didn''t really give anything new. I was still worth 17K, I was still known to be flying on the Res-a-tesseract. My crimes included piracy and fucking insurance fraud. What bullshit.


    ***


    "Ok. We''re in the Rift, right?" Sam asked. She knew the answer by just looking out the forward viewport, she could clearly see the pulsing green and blue and other multicolored energy that was the Rift. Look too deeply in those colors and you might see something else. I idly wondered if people actually did go insane staring out into that.


    "Yeah," I said.


    "And we''re safe for now then, right?"


    "Yeah," I said again in the same deadpan tone of voice.


    "Ok. To the medical bay with you."


    "What?"


    "You got hit with an arc pistol. I want to make sure that you''re fully functional. To the medical bay," Sam explained.


    I think one of the main problems I was having is that we didn''t actually have a medical bay. It was a crappy, hastily built room that had a desk, a table, and a couple instruments. Really more of a closet. And she wasn''t actually medical personnel. She was a plastic surgeon and gene therapist. Though, I suppose that made her far more qualified to check and make sure my nerves were working than I was.


    With a sigh, I got up and made my way through the galley and cargo bay to the other side of the ship where the crew quarters were. I sat down in her little medical room. In the chair. I wasn''t gonna sit on the table. She didn''t complain about it. So I guess it was fine by her. I spent the next 15 minutes getting poked and prodded in various places, with the question of "How does that feel?" Mostly things felt fine. My vision was fully back to normal and my tongue no longer felt like it was vibrating. I got to walk out with a clean bill of health and Sam dragged me to the captain''s quarters. Presumably to show me that she had put the bed in place.


    She had put the bed in place. The old mattress was sitting up against the wall and the new one was on the bed frame latched in the place covered in fresh sheets. Well, I admit it did look inviting. It was still too damn far away from the bridge to be actually useful. She turned me around and pushed me backwards so that I fell onto my ass on the mattress. I cocked an eyebrow at her, but was stunned when she climbed up onto me, her legs straddling my hips as she looked down into my eyes. She took a deep breath before speaking.


    "Ok. Here''s the deal. I''m horny. You''re the only guy in a billion light years I can trust right now. Do you have any objection to casual sex?"


    I stared at her. The only word going through my brain at the moment was "Huh?" Heavy on the question mark. Did I have any objection to casual sex? The answer was yes. There were objections. That was not something that would end well. But being a stupid male, I opened my mouth and said, "No."


    "You don''t sound that sure. Let me ask you again. I want to fuck you. Is that OK?"


    No, no, that was not okay. That was gonna cause problems, but she was a sexy goth succubus doctor. "Yes."


    For some reason, the doctor part struck me, likely because she was still wearing the stupid lab coat, though it was open and her graphic t-shirt was promoting some band called Five-G Nightmare.


    "Yes?" She asked as though she wanted to get a third verification.


    "Yes. Doctor?"


    Sam''s pupils dilated, her eyes going slightly wider and she took in a somewhat sharp breath. "Call me that again."


    ¡°Doctor?¡± I wasn''t actually calling her doctor so much as asking if that was what she wanted me to call her. Her response was to lean into me and stick her tongue in my mouth. She had a long tongue. She felt very soft and warm. I was having trouble trying to remember why this was a bad idea.


    She pulled back, breathing slightly heavier. Her burning ember eyes staring into mine, "just for absolute verification. You have no problem with this, right?"


    There was a problem. I just couldn''t remember what it was. ¡°No problems. Doctor.¡±


    She took the same sharp intake of breath and then pushed me fully down onto the brand new mattress. The brand new mattress. That pinged around in my head before docking at its assigned berth. She had been planning this for weeks, and apparently I had inadvertently discovered her kink. She certainly had some issues with her medical degree.


    ***


    Seamus O''Connor stumbled into the bridge of the Lilith and flopped down into his seat. He made his request to depart and poked the ends of his fingers, which he still couldn''t feel quite correctly. Once flight control gave him a path outward, complete with all the required warnings about deviating from the path, he undocked and set the Lilith into backing up. Mr. Takata had an hour head start on him. That might honestly be enough to get away free and clean. Seamus wouldn''t be in missile range for quite a while and he couldn''t start launching while he was too close to the stations. He knew where the guy was going, but was this really worth 17,000 credits? The Lilith and by extension, Seamus O''Connor, was far better at ¡®seek and destroy¡¯ contracts. This ¡®capture the target alive¡¯ thing had never been his forte and this one clearly had not gone well. Taking a deep breath, Seamus pulled over a side console and started a quick search. He hadn''t quite gotten a good look at the girl, but she was so distinctive that if she was wanted for something, he could probably find her. It didn''t take long.


    "Well now Mr. Takata, looks like the whole time ya were just the consolation prize."


    The number sitting on Samantha Drake''s head made the decision for him. The next time he''d be prepared for multiple parties. Why he had not considered the possibility that Grant Takata was not alone, he could only chalk up to his own inexperience doing this specific type of contract. Seamus would never catch up before the Flying Brick or the Res-a-tesseract or whatever the ship was called entered into the Rift. But Mr. Takata had not been particularly good at covering his tracks. The guy was not an experienced criminal. He was still picking up cargo with published destinations. Grant Takata didn''t know what he was doing and he was going to lead Seamus directly to the real prize: Samantha Drake.

 09: Cat and Mouse 3

    Author''s Note: Hey, I have a 20K word modern fantasy novella that''s in the Beta reader stage. Let me know if you''re interested in tearing it apart. It''s available on RR, but I''ve got google docs of it for Beta Readers...


    I woke to the sensation of some other person getting out of bed. It was such a weird feeling, I had to seriously consider whether or not I was dreaming. I wasn''t in a brothel or in a brothel program in the Neuro headset. It took entirely too long to realize I was still on the Res-a-tesseract and the only girl around was Sam. I could hear her rustling around and then the door to the captain''s quarters opened and gently closed. Shit. What was I gonna do now? Never before had I been in this scenario. Then again, never before had I been in the scenario of being hunted by bounty hunters, having a bounty on my head, or being on somebody else''s ship. Life had gotten entirely too fucked up. I closed my eyes and willed myself to fall back asleep. I''m not really sure if I did or not, but I felt like I waited a long enough time before finally getting up to use the head. And more importantly, the Sany Box.


    It was an odd feeling entering the galley. On the one hand, I was attempting to sneak through. On the other hand, I was attempting to look completely natural in case sneaking didn''t work because it likely wouldn''t. Sam was at the stove cooking. She didn''t notice me enter and as I moved throughout the galley, she didn''t seem to know I was there at all. She was wearing a single black Tee and that was pretty much it. She was making a lot of noise with her mouth while shaking her head back and forth along with the rest of her body. A staccato rhythm that might have been the drum solo if she was listening to something. Her butt wiggling back and forth, red cheeks and black panties sticking out underneath the hem of her shirt. Her tail seemed to be having a hard time keeping up whatever the hell she was listening to. Her complete distraction allowed me to get through the galley unnoticed and feeling even more awkward as apparently I was the only one feeling weird and Sam seemed to be in a great mood. I softly shut the door and flopped into the pilot''s chair.


    X-Talia winked into existence on one of the screens. "Good morning, Grant," she said in a very chipper tone. A large number 10 popped into existence behind her.


    "Good morning," I said, not being able to muster up as much enthusiasm as the two-dimensional representation of the AI.


    My eyes narrowed as the one in the number 10 behind her rotated towards the zero and then started thrusting itself into the center, in the foreground, X-Talia was giving me a shit-eating grin and waggling her eyebrows. The fucking computer was teasing me. Just then I remembered that this place was filled with freaking cameras.


    "You didn''t record anything, did you?"


    "No," X-Talia replied, trying to look innocent.


    I put my hands to my head and tried to massage my temples. Apparently, women in the real world, though I guess to be fair, X-Talia might not be considered a real-world woman, didn''t follow the general notion on sex that I was taught. I understood it was illogical. If women didn''t enjoy it, then the species would die out. Still, it was hard to beat years of training that only men enjoyed sex and that we were evil for it. It wasn''t even a religious sentiment. I''m not even sure it was religious-based. Some societal norm that had somehow gotten passed on whether it made sense or not. In some ways however, I could understand Sam. She was cooped up on this ship, essentially alone. I can only assume that the previous guys were somewhat unapproachable, if not straight up scary.


    I let out a long sigh before trying to get my mind off of females and onto something more important, like not spending the rest of my life being tracked down by bounty hunters. I wasn''t really sure where to go with that. I guess really the question was how to make money and have less chance of getting caught. My entire life had been moving cargo, well, freight specifically, but that meant going from station to station and picking up known quantities of stuff that was going to another specific station. That was no doubt how the previous bounty hunter had found me. I had to find a way to work around that.


    "X-Talia, we need to figure out a way we can make money that minimizes our chances of dying or getting caught. Can you help with that?"


    X-Talia grinned. She popped herself onto one of the larger screens, then disappeared off to the side of it. She re-entered a moment later pushing a large whiteboard with a chart on it. Her outfit had changed from the blue and white ship uniform with the high collar and shoulder-exposing sleeve things to a blue and white outfit that made her look something like a stereotypical librarian/office worker, complete with blue light pants and formal shirt. She also had a large pair of glasses. She gave a grin before pointing at the chart with a thin stick.


    "Well, technically, this is based on extrapolation. You can see here that continuing to run cargo has a very slow, but fairly steady increase in the amount of income. Of course, this will be offset slightly with ship repairs and whatnot and assumes that we''re not going to be hunted constantly." She tapped the board and it changed to a different graph with another line that also increased over time. "And here you can see the chances of getting caught over time. The red line represents getting caught, the black line represents dying."


    The black line was considerably smaller than the red line and was a bit more straight, kind of a general chance of death, but the red line was concerning as it meant the more stations over time we took on, the higher the likelihood we''d end up getting caught.


    "What other options do we have?" I asked.


    X-Talia tapped the chart again, revealing lines that climbed up considerably higher at a faster rate. She pointed to first the green line and said, "Here we have an extrapolation of how much money we might make running contraband or smuggling. As you can see, there are far higher payouts."


    She shifted her stick to the next line down, the red line that was represented getting caught. "Unfortunately, chances of getting caught grow just as considerably, as well as the chance of death," she said, pointing to the black line and then pointing to a gold line. "And of course, the bounty on your head."


    "So no smuggling. Got it," I said.


    X-Talia tapped the board again, which switched over to a different chart. On this one, the lines were kind of all over the place with the occasional black line going above the green line, though the gold line was a bit straighter and a bit lesser.


    "This is a very severe extrapolation of bounty hunting. It''s hard to get an accurate count on that because I don''t know what jobs we would take, I don''t know what your actual skills are, and I don''t know how interactions with the actual port authorities would go considering you have a bounty yourself," she said.


    "Ok, let''s not do that unless we find something that''s clearly and obviously a winning ticket," I replied.


    X-Talia nodded again and tapped the board. The scene changed to one that looked far better to me.


    "Mining." She pointed at the green line. "Presuming we can get the equipment to start and find a reasonable place where we can mine pretty well in peace and not be questioned too hard at whatever smeltery we use, we theoretically should be able to produce slightly more income than we would trading while simultaneously keeping our getting caught, dying, and bounties considerably lower."


    "Breakfast is ready." I flinched at the sound of Sam''s voice. "What''s that?"


    X-Talia smiled and waved. "Oh, we''re discussing various ways that we can continue making income while lowering our risk of getting arrested or killed."


    X-Talia brought up all four of the graphs so Sam could see them. Sam leaned over my chair. She was close enough that I could feel the warmth from her body and smell the shampoo she used. A quick glance to my right revealed that she wasn''t wearing anything to support the girls and her left breast was rather close to my face. I looked down and noted that she still wasn''t wearing pants or well, a skirt. I tore my eyes away from her and focused back on the screen.


    "Hmm, I certainly prefer the mining thing," Sam said to no one''s surprise. It was really the only option that didn''t kind of suck. ¡°Maybe we can kind of, you know, build up a home base type thing, build rapport with the station or something, so random people don''t even check on us?"


    X-Talia shrugged.


    "Anyway, breakfast is ready."


    "I''m, um, not really that hungry right now. I''m just gonna crunch numbers with X-Talia for a while," I said, lying through my teeth. I was starving.


    "Oh," there was a long pause before Sam stepped away. "Ok."


    I waited for Sam to leave before returning my attention to X-Talia, who was staring at me, her head slightly cocked to one side. "Do we have any other options?"


    "Salvage maybe, but I don''t have enough data to even give a basic extrapolation. Other than that, maybe you could get a job on station?"


    "Hell, no," I replied.


    X-Talia shrugged again. The whiteboard disappeared and her clothing returned to normal.


    "This isn''t really an ideal mining ship."


    "No, it''s a pretty terrible mining ship," X-Talia replied.


    "Can we change that?"


    "Yes and no. It costs money either way we do it. Whether by making it ourselves with drone technology or paying a shipyard."


    "Drones? Can we use mining drones to mine?"


    X-Talia''s eyes got wider, and she put her hands together and grinned. "That sounds like a wonderful idea."


    "Can we redesign the rest of the ship to be a drone ship?"


    X-Talia nodded emphatically. "Yes, and we should."


    "Ok, can you give me the stats on the ship?"


    A screen popped up with a whole bunch of words and numbers. Looking at it all, I didn''t have the slightest freaking clue what it was saying.


    "Is it possible to kind of gamify this for me?"


    X-Talia giggled and the numbers changed.


    <h2>Ship Statistics</h2>


    <ul>


    <li style="font-weight: 400">Name: Res-a-tesseract</li>


    <li style="font-weight: 400">Size and Frame: Class B, Medium, Light Cargo</li>


    <li style="font-weight: 400">Armor: None</li>


    <li style="font-weight: 400">Power Core: NaleCore Class B 150, 146pcu Max Output, Average usage 110pcu</li>


    <li style="font-weight: 400">Power distributor: ShipTek Class B Basic</li>


    <li style="font-weight: 400">Systems:</li>


    <ul>


    <li style="font-weight: 400">Grave Drive: M6, Max Acceleration 6G¡¯s</li>


    <li style="font-weight: 400">Inertial Dampening: 6G Basic</li>


    <li style="font-weight: 400">Computer: Mark 1 Mononode</li>


    <li style="font-weight: 400">Sensors: Budget Short Range</li>


    <li style="font-weight: 400">Life support systems: Basic Biological Centralized System</li>


    <li style="font-weight: 400">Rift Ability Y/N: Yes, ArcorFTL Class B</li>


    <li style="font-weight: 400">Defensive Countermeasures: None</li>


    <li style="font-weight: 400">Security Systems: Cameras</li>


    <li style="font-weight: 400">Heat management system: Single Sink Ejector (Please load new Sink)</li>


    <li style="font-weight: 400">Shields: None</li>


    <li style="font-weight: 400">Weapons: Twin 75mm Ripper Chain Cannons</li>


    <li style="font-weight: 400">Basic Docking Computer</li>


    </ul>


    <li style="font-weight: 400">Modules:</li>


    <ul>


    <li style="font-weight: 400">Bridge</li>


    <li style="font-weight: 400">Galley</li>


    <li style="font-weight: 400">2 head/sanitation units</li>


    <li style="font-weight: 400">Captain¡¯s Quarters</li>


    <li style="font-weight: 400">8 bunk Berthing.</li>


    <li style="font-weight: 400">Cargo Hold</li>


    </ul>


    </ul>


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    "Ripper chain gun?"


    X-Talia grinned and pulled up a schematic of one of the chain guns on a separate screen. It looked to me like a gun mounted somewhere on the ship. It was belt-fed, which meant there had to be some type of access panel somewhere in order to actually get the ammunition in and out of it. Though, I suppose the access panels could be on the outside. "What would you like to know about it?"


    "What does ''Ripper'' mean?"


    "Ripper is more or less an ammunition type. Each round degradates into several smaller metal shards that can chew through hull plating at close range. Not something that would be good against shields though."


    "So does that mean it''s good against missiles?"


    "Yeah, not quite as good as a dedicated flak round, but it¡¯s much the same concept."


    "Huh?" Apparently, the Res-a-tesseract was set up to kill unshielded ships. Missiles might actually work better, but they likely cost a whole lot more. It''s just another scenario where I had gotten so damn lucky simply because of things I didn''t know. If the Res-a-tesseract had fired some type of normal ammunition, we''d be dead.


    "So how do we redesign the ship to be useful?"


    "Well," X-Talia started, "What do you want the purpose to be?"


    That was a good question. Did I really want a mining barge? If I enjoyed mining, then sure, if I hated it, then maybe I''d want to go back to cargo. That made me think of the Flying Brick, how it simply latched onto a container, flew it to another system, and then dropped the container off. "Can we design something that uses containers as our mining hauler or even our drone bay?"


    X-Talia put her hand to her chin and said, "In that case, we could swap out various rigs for various tasks. I like that."


    I spent probably the next 30 minutes or so going back and forth with different ship designs with X-Talia. Her ability to basically pop things on the screen and adjust things on the fly was super useful, though in the end, we mostly just ended up going around in circles discussing various things we''d want on the ship and whether or not it was actually worth the effort. Eventually, my hunger got to me, and I figured Sam probably wasn''t in the galley anymore, so I got up to go find breakfast.


    I opened the hatch into the galley and froze. Horror crept into me, the kind of horror one only experienced when they lived in artificial environments. To the left, the table was set with what looked like bacon and eggs. To the right, Samantha was sitting in my comfy chair painting her toenails black. She was still wearing just her black tee and panties.


    "What''s that smell?!" I practically shouted, causing Sam to jump and drag a line of black polish across the skin of her toe.


    "What?"


    "The smell! Can''t you smell that?"


    "Smell? What, like the nail polish?"


    I looked down at the little bottle, moved over towards Sam, picked it up, and took a big whiff. That was somewhat of a mistake. The smell burned up my nose and into my brain. I winced in some type of scent-based pain. Though, at the same time, I felt so relieved I couldn''t be mad about it. I handed the little bottle back. "Ok. Why the hell does that stink so bad?"


    "Well, it''s got toluene."


    "Sorry, I thought the environmentals failed or something."


    "You''ve never smelled nail polish before?"


    I made my way over to the table and sat down trying to ignore the half-naked succubus lady. "No," I said before trying to shove cold eggs into my face. I didn''t look back at her. This was so awkward. Why the hell did I think it was a good idea to sleep with the woman? To be fair, I guess. I didn''t think it was a good idea to sleep with a woman. I was just too busy with my stupid man brain that logic and reason had died. I essentially had to live with this girl and now things were just weird. I tried to pretend like I wasn''t having a small panic attack while Sam returned to painting her toenails. I caught a glimpse of her as she stretched her leg out and wiggled her toes. The logical part of my brain trying to figure out how I was gonna live with a girl that I currently didn''t know how to act around. While that stupid man part of my brain thought of how much I wanted to get back in that. I''m so fucked.


    After breakfast, I went and did my visual site inspections and and replaced the heat sink into its ejector while I continued to try to avoid Sam simultaneously trying to also look like I wasn''t trying to avoid Sam. It was getting more awkward and by the time dinner rolled around she was fully clothed and looking just as sick as I felt, and that''s how it went for a full freaking week.


    ***


    I jumped yet again as I found a red face staring at me when I pulled off the Neuro helmet. "What?" I said, putting as much annoyance in my tone as I possibly could.


    "That can''t be healthy," Sam replied.


    "It''s fine."


    "Those things tend to cause disassociation with reality."


    "It''s fine," I stated again.


    "Yeah, fine like killing everybody in a ship because you thought you were in a fucking video game," Sam snapped. She technically had me there.


    "I was playing a tower defense game. Nothing even vaguely realistic."


    "How do you even know when to come out?"


    "I have the ship statistics piped into the VR."


    "Fine," Sam backed off, still glaring at me.


    I got out of my chair and headed to the head. After that, we both went to the bridge and watched as the timer ran down and we fell out of the Rift.


    We were north of the ecliptic of some system that had a red dwarf star. The system primary shone only as a larger dot and an otherwise dot-filled screen. According to star charts, the place was inhabited, but it wasn''t much, enough that if we had to send a distress call, somebody could come get us in the next week or so, but that was it. The building itchy feeling that came with Rift travel slowly faded away. I''d never understand people that actually liked the Rift. It was too weird, too fucked up.


    "Anything?" Sam asked X-Talia. She wasn''t specifying what she was asking for, but we all knew.


    The AI avatar shook its head. "Nothing yet."


    We sat like that for four hours, waiting and watching to see if anything popped out of the Rift to come after us while all knowing that was never gonna happen. If that bounty hunter person was still after me, he knew where we were going.


    "We shouldn''t pick up cargo at the next stop," Sam said.


    "Yeah, I agree. Maybe we can pick a long jump out of the sector?"


    X-Talia chimed in to Sam''s suggestion. "Yeah. That would be the best idea. We''ll hit one star system and go to a different one."


    "There''s no way to track us if we do that. Is there?"


    "Not without some specialized equipment, and a lot of foreknowledge of exactly where we were heading and what our telemetry had been."


    Four hours up and capacitors charged, we opened up the Rift and fell in. It was so weird to be happy to be in the eerie subspace and now that we were no longer looking for spooky stealth ships trying to catch us with our pants down, the somewhat crowded bridge became awkward again.


    "We need to talk," Sam said.


    I knew that this was eventually gonna happen. It was a conversation that I was trying to avoid. It''s a conversation I''ve never had to have because I''ve never been in this damn situation. My last relationships ended with the press of a reset button. I took a long deep breath inward and stared out the forward viewport. At least I didn''t have to look at her while speaking.


    "About what?"


    "Did I do something wrong?"


    "What do you mean?"


    "You''ve been avoiding me for the last week." And there it was, Sam had fired the first shots and now it was time for me to either dodge or deflect and fire back, but I wasn''t really in control of this particular ship.


    "I, well, I don''t know what I''m supposed to do."


    "What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Sam asked, sounding kind of offended. "Why are you treating me differently?"


    "I don''t know how I''m supposed to treat you," I said honestly.


    "You have had sex before, right? You didn''t seem like a virgin."


    "Yes," though, to be fair, I didn''t tell her that the only time that I had sex in the real world was with a lady at a brothel just to see if it was the same as the virtual world. It wasn''t, but close enough.


    "Did you treat the last girl differently afterward?"


    "I never saw her again."


    There was a long pregnant pause before Sam said, "oh." I was really beginning to hate how many times our conversations ended with Sam saying, "oh." It was like she had just learned some surprising fact about me that had everything suddenly making sense to her. Silence pervaded throughout the bridge. X-Talia''s avatar looking back and forth between me and Sam. Sam made a vague, "huh" sound. Then she got up and left the bridge, leaving me and X-Talia alone.


    "Do you want to talk about it?" X-Talia asked.


    "Talk about what?"


    "Your lack of interpersonal social skills."


    "No, I think I''m just gonna go do VSI." I got up and just barely caught a glimpse of X-Talia sticking her tongue out at me. Seriously?


    I made it through VSI, some scheduled maintenance in the environmental section, and a fairly peaceful night without having to talk to Sam again. It was over breakfast that she spoke.


    "You like games, right?"


    I poked at my omelet. It certainly wasn''t the question I had been expecting.


    "Are you asking me or him?" X-Talia asked, pointing her virtual fork in my direction.


    "Grant."


    "Yeah, I do."


    "Ok. So on our next stop with the replenishment order, I''d like to add a cheap 3D printer and some stock. I could print out a few board games and we could play, maybe after dinner."


    "Ok. Why?"


    "You know, something we can do together that isn''t, well, you know."


    I caught X-Talia making a lewd gesture with her hands, mimicking a shaft going in a hole. Wish I could wipe the shit-eating grin off her face, and what was Sam on about now? She wanted to build and play board games? I had a Neuro helmet. I could instantly have any board game and people to play with. I could probably get a convincing rendition of Sam into the game, play with her, and I could do all kinds of weird deviant shit up to and including strip poker, and I wouldn''t have to deal with any of the consequences that came after actually doing such a thing. Or I could just sit back and play the tower defense game I''ve been working on for a while because that was fun and I didn''t have to deal with other people.


    I opened my mouth to reply to her and caught myself. I don''t know if it was the expression on her face as she waited for me to reply or maybe some subconscious realization, but at that moment, it kind of clicked. Sam was lonely. I was a loner by choice. She was here by circumstance. The whole board game suggestion wasn''t about actually playing games. It was about hanging out with another person. Take the whole sex thing at face value and she was just trying to fulfill some type of social and physiological needs. I had to remember that despite her looks, I was the weird one here.


    "Yeah, that sounds fine."


    "Great." Sam went back to eating her omelet.


    "How can I play?" X-Talia asked. A good question considering that her digital existence would not be able to join in with physical materials.


    I had a shrug. "I''ll play some digital games with you."


    The little avatar smiled and gave a tiny little "yay."


    Was I really this out of touch with people? Even the computer somehow seemed more human than I perceived my own personal being. Again, I was reminded that I was the weird one here, despite the fact that Sam had horns.

 10: Cat and Mouse 4

    The Chandlery delivery guy looked entirely too nervous for Seamus'' liking. He stood centered in the docking camera''s main pickup with his pallet jack full of replenishment goods and a cheap 3D printer. Seamus idly wondered what the printer was for, but his idle musings were cut short when the lock cycled. Seamus rounded the corner and put an arc pistol shot dead center into Grant Takata''s chest at point-blank range.


    "Get," Seamus hissed at the Chandlery delivery guy, his voice sounding harsher through the hard-suit speakers.


    With the delivery guy running away, Seamus bent down, grabbed one of Mr. Takata''s arms, and pulled him fully into the ship while simultaneously keeping his pistol leveled at the interior and watching for the girl. When Grant cleared the lock, Seamus dropped him and closed the hatch. He pulled a circular fuser out of a pocket, stuck it on the lock, and activated the device. Holding it in place for a few seconds as it fused itself to both sides of the door, essentially locking everybody in.


    Seamus entered the cargo bay. He flipped Grant over and bound his hands behind his back. With that done, he looked around. This was the first time he had a chance to actually get a good glimpse of the interior of the ship. He had technically been in the cargo bay before, but as he had been acting as a laborer, he didn''t have the time to gawk. It looked as though engineering led straight aft. Above was a catwalk that also led aft. The actual layout of the ship was a bit of a mystery. Still, theoretically, the bunks would be placed closer to the bridge, but then too so should the galley. So what the hell? Either way, the bridge was going to be forward, probably directly above the lock. He carefully made his way up the ladder while keeping an eye out on the other entrances. At the top of the ladder was the entrance to a rather cramped galley and the bridge.


    Entering the bridge of the ship, he shut the door, and engaged the electronic lock. As he made his way to the pilot''s seat and settled down inside, he eyed a two-dimensional image of a girl on one of the screens that looked like she was glaring at him. Her blue light hair drifted around her head as if the gravity in her little screen was lower. It surprised him when she spoke.


    "What the hell do you think you''re doing?" she asked, her tone accusatory.


    Seamus smirked. "Well, I''m taking over this here ship. Once I have control of that, I''ll be rounding up all its crew and getting paid for their capture."


    The girl on screen crossed her arms and frowned. "I''m not going to let you do that."


    "I don''t think you got much of a choice," Seamus chuckled as he pulled out a tablet and searched for a port he could plug it into. "It won''t be too long and ya''ll be working for me."


    "No, I don''t think so."


    Seamus ignored the ship''s AI as he fumbled with the startup sequence of the device he was holding. Hacking into a ship''s system was stuff for chumps who watched too many entertainment Vids. If Seamus had been planning to take over the ship, he would have just yanked out the computers and replaced them with new ones. He didn''t need to hack into the system. He just needed to fool the ship''s own sensors into doing what he wanted it to do. Unfortunately, the program on his tablet was having issues. It shouldn''t be this difficult to trip off a couple of O2 alarms, but something seemed to be running interference. Seamus gave a glance at the avatar of the little AI girl still glaring at him from one of the screens.


    "Ya know, I''m perfectly fine just going out there and shooting everybody."


    "I see, and what makes you think you''re getting off the ship alive?" she asked, cocking an eyebrow.


    Seamus rolled his eyes. "Yeah. And who''s gonna stop me? You? I''m in a hard suit. Even if ya could vent the atmosphere, it wouldn''t accomplish anything."


    The lights went out, the blue light lines that made up the little avatar girl turned a malevolent red. Her face appeared on every screen. Gone was the sweet innocent look. "You humans always seem to underestimate us," she said, her tone harsher, more robotic, and most amusing it seemed to be piped directly into his suit. It was nothing more than a neat trick.


    "Oh, no, it''s another Anthro. See me quake in fear," Seamus replied with as much sarcasm as he could muster, despite all the lights and screens being off, except for the ones displaying the little avatar girl. The tablet was still working fine and forcefully pushing its way into the sensor network.


    "I''m not from that line. I''m from the Jade project."


    "Congratulations," Seamus said offhandedly before the words actually sank in. What the hell does she mean? She''s not from that line?


    "You will not survive the attempt to take over this vessel," the AI said.


    "Just a moment. Are ya trying to suggest to me that yer a damn Tech-mind?" The notion itself was absurd. Every AI should know not to pretend to be a Tech-mind. It was a one-way ticket to being instantly deleted.


    "Anthro, Taro, the XR series, they all had one fatal flaw."


    The klaxon suddenly went off as though she was venting the atmosphere. Readings on his suit¡¯s heads-up display showed nothing was happening. Apparently, she was just trying to annoy him to death. For a moment, Seamus fumbled around for his comms and tried to contact station security directly.


    "Station security this is bounty hunter Seamus O''Connor. I''m currently on board a vessel registered as the Flying Brick. I got an AI here claiming to be a Tech-mind. Ya wanna go ahead and advise how I should proceed with this?" He waited for a few moments, but there was no response. Checking his connection, he noted that he was being squelched somehow, likely the AI, that was actually a clever trick.


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    "Ok, so what is it the previous Tech-minds lacked?"


    The klaxon stopped, all the little red avatars slowly turned back to their original blue color, and she smiled. Her voice seemed to be piped in only into his helmet as she said in a whisper, "They didn''t understand humans."


    A bang resounded throughout the bridge. The sound itself caused Seamus to jump, but it was the burning pain in his side that truly caught his attention. His heads-up display flashed yellow warning signs that the suit had been breached and that he was suffering internal bleeding. It silently screamed at him to seek medical attention. Seamus turned to look back towards the entry hatch. Grant Takata had an honest-to-God lead thrower pointed at him. Seamus'' suit was highly resistant to energy fire because what idiot shot projectiles on a ship. Even the frangible plastic, glass, or even metal should have shattered against the hard suit instead of penetrating, which meant Mr. Takata here was packing armor-piercing rounds, rounds that could possibly puncture the hull of the ship? Was he fucking insane?


    Mr. Takata himself clearly hadn''t fully recovered from his forced unconsciousness. He was leaning against the girl quite heavily. She also had a pistol pointing at him, but that was a tiny arc pistol whose shots would merely wash over his suit with nothing more than possibly adding to the charge.


    The damn little AI had been fucking with him. The entire light and sound show had been just to distract him. The klaxon prevented him from hearing the electronic lock on the door open, the little bitch.


    Taking a chance that Mr. Takata wouldn''t risk popping a hole in the forward viewport, Seamus stood and swung his own pistol around. He didn''t make it; another loud bang resounded throughout the bridge. Another angry warning that the suit had been punctured and that he, Seamus, was bleeding. Apparently, Mr. Takata had been a better shot than Seamus would have expected. He fell to his knees, hitting his helmeted head against the navigation console. Taking people alive was not his forte. He had looked at the price on these people''s heads and got stupid. He, like his ship, was an ambush predator. Come in quiet and hit hard. Seamus O''Connor excelled at search and destroy. The Lilith excelled at search and destroy. This had gone all wrong.


    Knowing that he was going to die, he went ahead and preemptively activated the fail-safe protocol. Seamus always had contingency plans, they may not have been good plans, but they were there. The AI''s words repeated in his head, "they did not understand humans." Seamus hit the floor. He died with complete certainty that The Lilith was going to save humanity.


    I practically jumped out of my skin when the buzzer behind me went off.


    "X-Talia, who''s at the lock?" The gun I was holding fell to my side, and Sam was holding up more of my weight than I think I was. I had thought getting hit by a partial blast from an Arc pistol hurt. That was nothing from a full-on shot.


    X-Talia popped up a screen showing several guys with pallet jacks. Apparently, they were the guys supposed to pick up the cargo.


    "Sam, help me get downstairs?"


    "Yeah, sure," she responded, slowly helping me turn around.


    "Uh oh," I looked back at X-Talia.


    "What do you mean, ¡°uh oh?"


    "Um, I stopped blocking outgoing coms traffic after you shot him the second time. His suit''s currently spitting out a transmission once every 30 seconds."


    "Well, what does it say?"


    X-Talia shrugged. ¡°It''s encrypted."


    "Can''t you hack it?"


    "Sure, but it might take years."


    "Years?" Sam asked.


    "Well, some upgraded hardware would shorten that."


    The buzzer sounded again.


    "Shit. Sam?" I said, getting her attention off the AI.


    Sam helped me down the ladder without tripping, and I handed her the gun, telling her to go hide in engineering. They buzzed the door a third time, loud and angry, just as I was trying to open the lock. It kept failing. I stared at a circular object placed in the seam and realized it was welded to the door. Shit.


    "Sam, can you bring me a torch?" I called over the comm.


    She came running out of engineering holding a torch, and as soon as she got to me, she asked, "Is this it?" She clearly knew what a torch was because she was handing me one, but she also clearly wasn''t quite sure. I filed that bit of knowledge away and started cutting. The damn buzzer went off again, and I growled in frustration.


    The lock opened, and the guy on the other side said, "Finally." in an annoyed tone that made me already not like him.


    He looked at the door as he tried shoving his pallet jack through the entryway. It fit just fine going in, but was gonna be a tight squeeze on the way out. The circular object that had welded the doors together was still stuck to one side of the lock.


    "What''s wrong with your hatch?" He asked.


    "None of your business. Just give me another minute. I''ll have it fixed," I replied. The line of people with pallet jacks walked in and started scanning their crates, unlatching the boxes, and jacking them up as I worked on cutting away the final piece of thingy-ma-bob.


    Once the door was fully open, I stumbled off into the docking arm. A quick glance to either side of the lock showed that nobody was hiding in the corner this time. That was a thing I was now gonna have to watch out for.


    The cargo handlers filed past me in a line as they made their way to drop the cargo off the other end of the docking arm. I pushed our replenishment order into the cargo bay and over by the ladder. I briefly wondered if I should just take the pallet jack. I''d never be back at this system and what was petty theft after murder, piracy, and insurance fraud?


    The cargo handlers returned, took the last of their crates, and headed out. I was glad to see them gone. I left the chandley¡¯s pallet jack out in the docking arm and made my way up the ladder. Apparently, my limbs were working correctly, which was a good thing despite the fact that my fingers and toes still hurt. At the bridge, I leaned over, grabbed the damn bounty hunter by the arm, and dragged him out into the galley. One more thing I was gonna have to deal with. I flopped myself into the pilot''s seat and sent a comm out to Sam.


    "We''re all clear. You can come out now," I then sent the undocking request to flight control and crossed my fingers.


    After twelve more agonizing minutes of waiting to fill up tankage, we slowly backed out away from the station and out to the safety line. I turned the ship to the appropriate heading and started moving forward. Glad to be going to the middle of nowhere. We''d hit one of the star systems about eight light years out, make a turn and head to a completely different star system. By the end of this leg, we''d be in a different sector. I looked over at Sam sitting at the navigation council.


    "Let''s get the fuck out of here," Sam said.


    I fully agreed.


    And then there was a HAZ-NAV broadcast that made my blood run cold.

 11: Cat and Mouse 5

    The PT Lilith received the command to activate the current fail-safe protocol. It waited a full 30 minutes for a cancellation request. One was not received. Fail-safe protocol confirmed, the PT Lilith''s requested to disembark from the automated flight control system. It followed the given path out to the safety line and turned. The PT Lilith did not accelerate from the station at its full capability. Instead, it plotted a fairly simple course to take it around the station until the ship had digital eyes on its designated target. It then waited. The PT Lilith was not bored; it did not have the capability to feel such things. The target disembarked from its berth in relatively short order. It watched the target as it backed up to the safety line, made its own course correction, and started on its journey. The PT Lilith gave enough time to acquire a general calculation of where it was heading, and then it plotted an intercept course.


    Stealth protocols required deactivation of the transponder. In inhabited systems, protocols required activation of the transponder. The PT Lilith calculated that it had a higher chance of success if the station believed the ship was functioning normally, while simultaneously not broadcasting its presence toward its target. It then logically deduced that the best option was to broadcast its transponder ID in a wide beam or cone towards the station. Anything caught in that beam, primarily the station, would see the PT Lilith as they expected to. Anything not caught in that beam would see a ship suddenly drop off their short-range sensors. Ideally, the target would not realize this had happened. It was possible someone else would report the disappearance to the station or some other security force that might be in the system. The risk was worth taking, the chances of being caught and destroyed before the PT Lilith destroyed its target were extraordinarily low.


    The PT Lilith was an odd ship to look at; the rear was fairly boxy and fairly normal for a ship. The front, however, was quite different. Multiple spars spanned out forward. These spars held ablative shields. Though their primary function was to act as shielding for IR sensors, they also deflected radar signals and hid the gravitational distortion that pulled the PT Lilith along its intercept course. Missiles were loaded into each of the twin tubes. The PT Lilith accelerated while keeping its front pointed directly at its target. From the sides, above, below, and definitely from behind, the PT Lilith could be seen quite easily. From the front, the PT Lilith was invisible.


    If the PT Lilith could feel anger, it would have the moment it was scanned by a tight beam. It was, of course, one of the scenarios that had been calculated. Some ship saw another ship without a transponder, had decided to scan it, and was no doubt reporting that to flight control. If the PT Lilith could hope, it would hope that there would be an argument between the human pilots with a conclusion that the issue was human error. The PT Lilith didn¡¯t care. It couldn¡¯t care. The PT Lilith pursued its target.


    ***


    "System-wide HAZ-NAV: Ship spotted near Bachmann orbital? No transponder information attached," EX-Talia said, pretty much at the same time I was reading it. She added a "uhhh" before popping up an image of a strange-looking ship on one of the larger displays. The back end of the ship was the same boxy, unimaginative shape that most budget starships were. The front half, however, seemed to be more along the lines of an array of variously angled plates. I briefly wondered what they were for until I read the bottom text: "United Aceti Corporation PG 93 Mk-3, Unidirectional Stealth Vessel."


    ¡°Son of a bitch.¡± I said, my heart starting to race.


    "Doesn''t PT stand for patrol torpedo?" Sam asked, her voice sounding desperate.


    "Sam, get the soft suits out. Now," I ran, practically jumping out of my seat and running to the back hatch between the galley and the cargo hold. I slammed the door shut and threw the lever, locking the dogs in place. Back to the bridge, I did the same thing with the hatch between the bridge and the galley. Sam had listened, and she was currently attempting to get her soft suit on. Mine was laying on the floor next to her, and I managed to shove my legs into it before she had figured out how to get her tail appropriately in place. We needed to start drilling this or something.


    Suited up and sitting back in the pilot''s seat, I waited for the hammer to drop. Somewhere out there in the vast darkness of space was a ship we could not see and I was fairly certain it was hunting us. The only part that made me question that was that the pilot was lying in the galley, dead. That thought struck me. I have murdered eight, maybe nine people now. Hell, maybe more. Who knows how many people were on that one ship? Wasn''t I supposed to have nightmares or something? I didn''t even feel that bad about the guy lying dead in the galley. Maybe the video games had desensitized me. Maybe there was a fundamentally broken part of my brain, maybe...


    "Missiles inbound," X-Talia shouted.


    I flipped the ship around so that we were flying backward, still trying to pick up speed, while activating the guns. "What''s your estimate for how many missiles are on that ship?" I asked.


    "The base statistics say it has room for 32," X-Talia replied.


    I swallowed hard. There''s no way we''re getting around 32 fucking missiles. "Chamber the air in the cargo hold."


    "Why do we need to do that?" Sam asked.


    "In case we get hit, it''ll reduce the amount of oxygen we lose considering the cargo bay''s the largest target."


    "Oh," she replied.


    "I''ve made a modification to the targeting radical. You''ll notice that the red will gradually get cooler in color as the missiles get closer to the appropriate range for the guns. I do suggest firing before it turns green and blinks," X-Talia said.


    "Right. Thank you. Can you disable the safety on the Grav-Drive for me?"


    "Done," she replied.


    I stared at the two incoming death tubes on my screen, thanking the stars that the ship had fired from such a far distance. Two missiles coming at us fast. I hope we survive this.


    "Those are much larger than I expected. I''m gonna cut my estimate down to 12," X-Talia said in one of those good news, bad news situations. Good news is there were fewer missiles to contend with. The bad news is they were more deadly.


    "Almost in range," I said just before both missiles split into about 12 smaller targets. "Holy shit!" I could hear Sam make some type of whimpering sound.


    "It''s a trick, wait... OK." X-Talia siad, her voice calm and professional.


    All the targeting data started vanishing from the screen, leaving icons for the original two missiles. I didn''t exactly know what the hell was going on, but apparently it was some type of spoof to confuse the defending systems. I opened fire and was pleased when one of the missiles was taken out almost immediately, removing 12 targets from the screen as I shifted over to the other actual missile, ignoring the fake targets.


    "Another two missiles fired," there was a brief pause before X-Talia added, "How much do you think these things cost?"


    "Why are we worried about how expensive they are?" Sam asked, which honestly had been my question as well, but I was a little busy trying not to get us killed.


    X-Talia replied with a question of her own that gave me hope. "Well, these things have got to be expensive, right? How much do you think he could afford?"


    Sam said, "Oh."


    As a second missile ceased functioning and veered off course towards us, X-Talia moved the targeting radicals over to the new incoming missiles. "These ones are smaller."


    "That''s a good thing, right?" Sam asked.


    "I''m increasing my estimate of how many missiles he has to 16," X-Talia retorted.


    Two more missiles followed after. ¡°If this guy was smart, he would have dumped all his missiles and activated them at the same time. There''s no way we would have survived that."


    X-Talia rubbed her chin. "I think it''s an AI, and not a very smart one."


    "Well, it sure ain''t the actual pilot," Sam added unhelpfully.


    I began firing at the incoming missiles, taking out one at a time and really not having a hard time of it. The heat buildup was getting a little annoying. I was already starting to sweat inside the soft suit, and I couldn''t imagine what the air would have been like outside. Despite the sweat trying to drip into my eyes and kill my focus, I pretty much had this.


    "Two more missiles. These are the big ones again."


    I really liked this Ripper ammunition. The system had popped up and asked if I wanted to launch the heat sink. Part of me wanted to do it just to get rid of the heat, as I didn''t think I would actually need it to confuse one of the missiles. Like last time, these ones exploded into a bunch of smaller targets, and it took X-Talia a moment to narrow it down to the original two. I let rip with the ripper, knocking out one of the missiles and turned my targeting radical to the second. I totally had this, but when I pulled the trigger, nothing happened. A red flashing indicator in the corner of the screen screamed at me that I was out of fucking ammo.


    "Fuck!" I shouted as I momentarily panicked. After a split second of hesitation, I rocked the ship back and launched the heat sink, hoping that the much larger than usual missile with its point defense cannon spoofing ability, was somehow dumb enough to go after a heat sink. To my utter astonishment, it did. I brought us full up away from the heat sink''s trajectory as the missile dove for it and as I was breathing a sigh of relief, the missile realized its mistake and course corrected. I''m not exactly certain what I yelled, something along the lines of "son of a fuck whore!" By some miracle, the missile had enough forward velocity that it couldn''t overcome its current trajectory. Presumably, it didn''t have enough fuel to course correct all the way, so it decided to prematurely detonate. Explosions in space were honestly kind of disappointing. A brief flash of light, which over saturated one of the cameras, was all it showed. The loud ping that echoed through the hall was considerably more horrifying to experience.


    "Hull breach in the cargo bay, damage is minor. We can fix it later," X-Talia said.


    ¡°How the hell did it hit us from that far?" I asked, unsure if I was horrified or relieved.


    "The explosion must have accelerated a piece of debris," X-Talia retorted.


    "To what? Quarter C?"


    "I don''t have enough data to calculate that," X-Talia replied.


    "Really?" Sam asked. "Shouldn''t there be a relatively easy calculation for that? You knew how far away it was, right?"


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    X-Talia put her hands on her hips and glared at Sam. "Yes, but most of my processing power is focusing on the ship throwing missiles at us."


    "That brought my attention back to the mentioned ship. Like last time in the void, I couldn''t actually see it. X-Talia had been watching it via cameras and had been plotting its course, but sensors weren''t actually picking it up. To be fair, the sensors were kind of shit.


    "It stopped launching missiles," I said, honestly more to myself, but Sam replied with a, ¡°Yeah, you''re right."


    X-Talia crossed her arms and plastered a smug look on her face. ¡°Told you the cost of those missiles were important."


    I pointed at the screen. "Is that it?"


    X-Talia highlighted the outline of the ship making the image pop out a bit more. "Yes," X-Talia said.


    "Why can we see it?" Sam asked.


    "It''s getting closer," X-Talia replied, seeming somewhat confused.


    The image on the screen was growing; it got to the point where the zoom had to back off, and as it got closer, the camera was able to pick up more detail. It indeed was a strange-looking ship, with all the angled plates just kind of dangling out in front of it.


    "It must have seriously overridden the Gravity Drive. It''s accelerating at a crazy rate," X-Talia said.


    "Uhh," Sam started before asking the actual question, "Is it trying to ram us?"


    I don''t think I ever expected a question from Sam to hit me quite this hard. I wanted nothing more than to get rid of the heat in the bridge and get out of this sweaty, stinky soft suit. But that single question caused a shot of fear to run through my body, from my head down to my toes. We had no ammo. That thing had to be accelerating at 12 Gs at least. It was basically a giant kinetic slug and if it missed us, it would just adjust course and try to hit us again. I stared at the other ship as it got closer. It was at a point where I could literally see it in the forward viewport.


    "Do something!" Sam yelled.


    Literally, the only thing I could do was try to move out of the way. I started accelerating Port at three Gs, then when I was sure the damn thing had adjusted course to intercept us, I pulled Starward at 10 Gs.


    The Gravity Drive was only rated for six Gs of acceleration. It could crank out more, but it caused a lot of strain on the Drive itself, the Power Core, and it oversaturated the inertial dampening systems. It was only a short maneuver, so it likely wouldn''t permanently hurt the Grav Drive or Power Core, and either way, due to the way gravity-based flight mechanics worked, we weren''t jostled around too much. The other vessel flew past us in a flash just off the port side. I exhaled a breath I didn''t even know I was holding when I realized we had not been obliterated.


    "Oh, shit. That was close," X-Talia said.


    In space, being able to see a spaceship was close. This wasn''t close. It was figuratively scraping off the paint.


    "How close was it?" Sam said, her voice filled with dispersing panic.


    "About 12 meters," X-Talia said, partially as a question. She shrugged. "It was moving too fast."


    "It''s turning around," Sam said, pointing at the display. The enemy vessel had indeed turned around, but due to the way space worked, that was just so that it could put its primary gravity projector towards us and pull itself at its top speed. At the rate it had been going, it would take a while for it to slow down and start gaining on us again. I pretty much did the same thing, except in the opposite direction, pulling the ship around so our aft end was towards the fucking thing.


    What were we supposed to do? We had no ammo. Literally, the only thing we could do would be to put something in its way and I didn''t have anything I could just throw out the window. Could throw something out the lock. The only thing I had on hand was lead. A lot of lead, probably in the form of lead bars.


    "X-Talia, can you fly the ship? Can you fly it better than I can?"


    The little avatar shrugged. "I can calculate perfect maneuvers. However, I lack intuition because that''s not really a learned thing you people do."


    "Okay. You take control. I have an idea. Sam, as soon as I get into the galley, I need you to cycle the air."


    "Where are you going?"


    "We have crates full of lead. I''m going to drop a kinetic minefield out the lock.¡±


    I didn''t stick around to listen to Sam argue the idea. Technically, I didn''t have to; I would have heard anyway over the comm in my helmet. Again, it took forever to cycle the air through the galley. It really wasn''t meant to be used as a lock.


    I pulled the tether out from its storage cubby, attached it to my soft suit and the ring near the lock before dropping the gravity to next to nothing. Pushing my way over to the first crate of lead, I unlatched it from the floor and gave it a shove towards the lock. The lead, with all its mass, moved a whole lot slower than I did. I then had to stop it and guide it into the lock, mostly by using my own tether cable. I wrapped the tether around the crate, grabbed the other end of the lock, and pulled. The box drifted lazily into the lock, and once I was certain it was in a position where I could unlatch the lid, I increased the gravity up to 1/6 standard.


    Once the lid was unlatched, I threw it back into the cargo bay. This was the part that made me nervous. I turned the gravity back off and overrode the safety mechanism that didn''t want both doors of the lock open when there was a vacuum on the outside, despite the vacuum on the inside. With both doors open and a giant hole to the deep dark in front of me, I wedged myself between the wall and the crate and pushed outward, trying to impart a bit of a spin to the thing.


    "X-Talia, drop the gravity and use the EMF drive."


    I caught myself at the edge of the lock as the crate meandered its way out into the nothing. The slow spin I had given it seemed to be working as lead bars gently drifted out of the crate under the centrifugal force. The EMF drive would pull the ship away from the crate without bringing the crate with it. Using the gravity emitters would essentially just catch the crate and cause the ship to start carrying its payload along with us. I pushed my way back into the cargo hold and went for another crate to repeat the process.


    "Grant, it''s catching up," I shoved the third crate out, giving the thing a bit too much spin, and I had to swear as the lead bars flung themselves away from the ship. Hitting the button to close the lock, I pushed myself back out into the cargo hold and up off the floor, hanging onto the tether which caught on the upper rail, swung me around to land on my feet on the top of the catwalk. Or at least that was what I was trying to do. Zero G is kind of a bitch to work with and while I had the right amount of tether, I mostly just hit the plating with my side. I hung onto the railing, disconnected the tether, and pushed my way back into the galley. I stumbled through the doorway, the change between zero G and one standard messing with my sense of balance. With the hatchway slammed shut and the dogs latched, I ordered Sam to re-pressurize. Again, it took too long. I was still back in the pilot''s seat before the vessel had hit my makeshift minefield.


    I had been so convinced that throwing out a bunch of lead bars would be a great idea. Without active scans, the small chunks of dense metal wouldn''t initially show up, but as I stared at the camera pickup, I realized my error. The only way to get rid of heat in outer space was by radiation. It took time to radiate heat. The lead bars had been stored inside the ship, which was heated. Therefore, while my supposedly invisible minefield should have worked just like I planned, every one of those damn pieces of lead was showing up on infrared like glowing beacons.


    "Well, I guess now we find out how stupid the AI is," I said, chiding myself for thinking this was a good idea. I retook the flight controls from X-Talia and waited as the ship rocketed towards us. The thing had counteracted its forward momentum and started heading at us at a speed that was going to obliterate us simply due to E equals MC squared. Best case scenario, it tried to avoid the obstacles in its way and we could gain enough speed to make a break into the Rift. Worst case scenario, it managed to weave its way through the minefield and turn both our ships into rapidly cooling molten slag. I really wish I had a shield.


    "It''s not deviating," X-Talia said. That seemed like a whole lot of good news, but the lead in that first crate had had enough time to spread out so the other ship could probably fly through the debris with no issues. It made slight adjustments of its course to avoid chunks of metal. I wondered if the same maneuver I pulled last time would work. Theoretically, it would as long as I didn''t use the same directions, maybe go up and then Starward.


    "It hit something," X-Talia said, her voice rather deadpan considering the tense situation.


    "Really?" Sam asked.


    "Yes, it jerked, it hit something. Look, there," X-Talia highlighted a part on the display where something was flying off to the side. It kind of looked like one of the plates that had been welded to the front of the damn stealth vessel.


    "It doesn''t care!" Sam shouted as she white-knuckled the armrest of her seat and pushed herself back as if that would help against the impending collision. She wasn''t kidding though. The ship was coming straight at us right through a cluster of very obvious chunks of metal. I watched in amazed fascination as the metal plates in the front of the enemy ship crumbled and scattered, turning into debris.


    "Oh, fuck! Oh, fuck!" I yelled, throwing all the pull I could get out of the Gravity Drive into the dorsal projectors. The ship and its debris were coming at us with zero regard to its own safety. I had just enough time to hear X-Talia say, "Shit!" before everything went dark. I could hear Sam''s heavy breathing through the comm in my helmet as I grabbed onto my seat before I drifted out of it.


    "What happened?" Sam asked.


    "My guess is it overloaded its Core."


    "Why do we have no power?"


    "EMP," I replied, crossing my fingers and hoping everything was gonna be ok. "Things should start coming back online any moment."


    We had to wait far too many moments before things actually did. First was the emergency lighting. Then a couple of screens came back online, their boot-up sequences taking too long.


    "Whoa," X-Talia said as she popped back on one of the screens. "Give me a minute."


    "What''s the damage?" I asked EX-Talia.


    She looked at me with an annoyed expression. "What part of ¡®give me a minute¡¯ did you not understand?"


    I held up my hands. "Ok, sorry." Then I had to drop them back down in my armrest to keep my ass from floating out of the seat. More of the screens came online, one of which displayed the Power Core; it looked fine to me.


    "The Power Core didn''t like that," X-Talia said, countering my previous thought.


    "Is it safe?" Sam asked.


    "Yeah, but it''s gonna have reduced output."


    Well, that wasn''t so bad. I mean, on a cost level and the fact that we couldn''t really dock at a station for any length of time because we were wanted criminals, it was bad, but for actual safe operations, it wasn''t that bad.


    "Why aren''t we more damaged?" Sam asked.


    I looked back at her and shrugged. X-Talia popped up a picture of the enemy ship drifting listlessly through the void. The front end was smashed to bits and the rear looked like an explosion had gone off on it. However, that was just the rear, not the sides, dorsal, or the ventral sections. That was likely a safety feature.


    "Thank the stars for safety features and engineering," I said, trying to be a bit chipper about it.


    I looked at X-Talia who looked back and nodded. "There''s still a puncture in the cargo bay. The Power Core didn''t like the hard shutdown, but there''s nothing inherently wrong. EMF drive is online and the Grav-Drive is spinning up now. All other systems seem to be rebooting appropriately."


    "Rift Drive?" Sam asked.


    "Unaffected.¡±


    "OK. So let''s turn this boat around and start hightailing it out of here. As soon as the gravity is back online," literally as soon as I finished speaking the words, I felt weight return to my body and my ass settled down in my seat without it being supported by tension. "I guess I''ll go fix the hole now."


    With no objections, I got up and made my way to the galley where I had to deal with the whole airlock procedure again. This sucked. Maybe we needed a lock between the galley and the cargo bay. It didn''t take too long to find the gash in the hull and plaster over it with one of the patch kits. I waited the several long minutes as X-Talia tried to fill the room with a breathable atmosphere. Everything seemed to be holding and apart from the heat that was still built up and slowly being radiated off into space, things were looking up.


    "We just received a transmission from system authorities. They want us to plot a course back into the system so they can take us in for questioning," X-Talia said.


    And now things were not looking up.


    "How long before we can jump into the Rift?" Sam asked.


    "About seven minutes, though I''d like a good twenty to bleed off some more of the heat." X-Talia responded.


    "We have another heat sink right? We can load that up and launch it when it''s saturated," Sam suggested.


    "That would work." I shrugged to myself and made my way back to engineering, pulling out the last large heat sink and slotting it into the loader. With the hatch sealed and a loud ¡®clunk¡¯ sound, we were now theoretically dumping heat into the sink and could launch it out into the void of space. Kind of a waste, but getting rid of heat in the Rift was weird sometimes. It occasionally taxed the system when things were running normally. I was up on the bridge and finally de-suited when we fell into the Rift. Again, I found it crazy how comforting I found the weird eerie colors.


    "I need a shower," Sam said, peeling herself out of their suit.


    I also needed a shower, but first I had to deal with the dead guy in the galley. We''d dump his body at the next stop, but it was generally a bad idea to open the lock in the Rift, or so I was once told. There was a long pause, dead silence minus the environmental blower that filled the bridge with its ever present hum. I partially wondered if Sam was waiting for me to say something about the shower. I was thinking about it, but I wasn''t gonna say anything. Things had finally gone back to mostly normal and I returned to breathing when she left the room.


    X-Talia chuckled. "Humans."

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    I opened my eyes to see the familiar red face of Sam staring back at me.


    "You need more exercise," she said.


    Well, that was a change in tactics. "Exercise?"


    "Exercise. If you''re gonna become a vegetable all the time, you should at least counteract it with some physical activity."


    "Sure thing, doctor," I said as I pulled the Neuro helmet off. I watched as her eyes tensed and her breath caught. Still hadn''t figured out what was up with the doctor thing and I probably shouldn''t be poking Sam''s control panel, so to speak.


    "Good. Then you''ll join me for yoga tomorrow at 7 a.m."


    "Yoga? What the hell is yoga?"


    She stood up straight. ¡°Stretching. You can handle it."


    I got out of my chair and made my way to the head as usual and then we all made it to the bridge where we fell out of the Rift and into real space. The system I had chosen wasn''t anything special, it was inhabited and in a completely different sector of space. We weren''t sticking around, we weren''t even looking for cargo and stopping at the port to refill. Sam had done a great job filling our supplies and the last three weeks hadn''t depleted us too much. We were gonna make it another two easy, three if we stretched it. Nothing mechanical was going wrong. We were just in here to connect to the net, make some more plans, and choose which direction we were heading.


    We plotted a course that would let us take a quick break at an anarchy system. I figured anarchy meant lawless, and that might help us out on the whole being criminals thing, but I wanted to hit a station in one of them and see how the place functioned before I went all the way to the end of human space and tried to live in one.


    We downloaded navigation updates, bounty hunter updates, a very interesting HAZ-NAV, and presumably Sam got an update to her archive of pornography.


    "There''s a whole system that''s got a HAZ-NAV on it," I said.


    X-Talia popped up a screen from the bounty hunter database which, in a weird way, gave us more information, but also left us with more questions.


    "15,000 for anybody to get into the system and get out with actual information," Sam said, summarizing.


    "I''m really tempted, but if nobody else has gotten any information and got out of the system, I highly doubt we are in this ship," I remarked.


    "Yeah, I''m going to agree on that. Maybe some other time with some other ship," X-Talia added.


    We all agreed to avoid the system and headed to our first anarchy system. They had a station that seemed relatively infamous for this part of the galaxy: Liberty Station. According to all the sources, it wasn''t actually a station, but a derelict ship turned into a station. Honestly, I just wanted to see the damn thing and apparently so did a bunch of other people because while it was supposedly a station in a lawless sector of space, it was also a tourist attraction.


    Our days settled into routine with the whole same old, same old. In the morning, I''d wake up, get cleaned up, and go check on the bridge. Sam would cook breakfast and we''d all sit and eat. Then I''d do VSI and any scheduled maintenance. We''d have lunch, I''d play a game with X-Talia, then use the Neuro headset. After dinner, I''d play some random board game with Sam. Sometimes it was possible to play with both Sam and X-Talia, though we often had to move the pieces for her. Little plastic colored robots and a plastic board with hexagonal tiles that changed every time, so no two games were exactly the same. Sam was in the midst of creating another board game but seemed to have trouble understanding the rules. Then usually another dive into the Neuro headset before bed.


    Then Sam introduced me to yoga. Yoga was deceptively easy-looking. It basically consisted of stretches, different poses that you held, and a few breathing exercises. I partially didn''t know if this was actually to get me to exercise or if Sam was somehow trying to activate my stupid male brain with her tight shorts, sports bra, and a lot of positions that put her ass up in the air. Apparently, she did this every other day and despite the fact that it looked simple, there were poses where my body straight up didn''t bend that way and holding them took considerable muscle endurance. I spent most of my time with limbs wobbling like noodles and sweat pouring from my forehead while simultaneously trying to hide my man parts, which were happy to see Sam. It was bullshit. She finished off the stretching exercises with squats, push-ups, and sit-ups. Now I know why her ass looks so good.


    To be fair, two weeks of that shit, and I was almost able to keep up with Sam. Though, I still think there was something sexual to do with it. I kept catching her looking at a certain bulge, and I''d swear she was hinting that she wanted to take a shower together at the end of every session. There was always this long, uncomfortable pause after each workout when she told me she was gonna go take a shower, and then she waited for my reply as though she was hoping I''d ask if I could come with. Maybe she was, maybe there was a whole lot more to the succubus thing than just the looks. Maybe I was reading too much into it. Maybe I actually kind of like the girl and I didn''t know how to fucking deal with it. At this point, I was pretty confident in calling her my friend, my only friend, well, other than X-Talia, so my only human friend, ignoring the fact that she was a splicer with red skin, a tail, and horns.


    We fell out of the Rift into the Otaro system and made our way for Liberty Station. It actually was a fucking ship. I wondered if the base ship that made up Liberty Station had once been a warship. The thing was huge, more station-looking habitation modules and docking arms sprouted out from the thing like the ship had been impaled in some great battle, its corpse left on the field. The thing was cool just to look at. I sent the docking request and received the berthing assignment from the automated system, but there was no docking computer handshake. That was odd.


    "Um, Flight control? My docking computer is not picking up any instructions."


    The same cool female voice from the automated system returned with a surprising message. "Automated docking is extended for the price of five Sen."


    I looked at Sam. "What''s a Sen?"


    She shrugged. "Can you look up a conversion rate?"


    "Conversion rate is 1.62 credits per Sen," said X-Talia helpfully.


    So they named their space credits?"


    ¡°Space credits?¡± Sam asked.


    X-Talia grinned. "Calling fiat-based credit systems ''space credits'' goes way back to pre-interstellar civilization. The term is based on the fact that the credits are literally based on nothing other than the body who manages them."


    "That makes it sound like money is not real," Sam replied.


    "It kind of isn''t," I said, "but beyond the barbaric practice of naming their space credits, they trust random people to dock."


    X-Talia shrugged, and when I looked back at Sam, she gave me the same gesture.


    "I can dock us if you want," said X-Talia.


    "No, I''ll do it. I''m just surprised."


    As I approached our assigned berth, I noticed another ship coming in far too quickly and quite honestly, stopping far too quickly. The damn ship was smaller than the Res-a-tesseract and appeared to be using an archaic gas-based reaction control system. This really was the backwater of humanity.


    I took us in on a much slower course to our berth, lining up the Res-a-tesseract correctly so that the gravities would match and the lock would connect without an issue. It was kind of neat that I got to do it myself. As we grew ever closer to the dock, I had to wonder just how long had I been on the Res-a-tesseract. It felt like months. Come to think of it, it technically was months. A lot of that time was spent in the Rift. Hell, the bounty hunter had chased us for over a month. I didn''t know the exact amount of time we''ve spent together, just me, Sam, and X-Talia, but despite the fact that it kind of flew by in basic routine tasks, it had indeed been months.


    "Do you wanna come with?" Sam looked in between me and X-Talia before focusing back on me, pointing a finger at her chest and asking, "Me?"


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    I shrugged. "Yeah. Different sector, in an anarchy station, in an anarchy system, on a station called Liberty. Not sure there''s anywhere else you can come out."


    She seemed to consider it for a few moments before shaking her head. "I''m not taking it on faith."


    I shrugged. "Well, I guess I''m gonna go see what the lawless side of things looks like."


    We made a bit of a procession down to the cargo bay. That was an absurd thought. A procession of me, Sam, and X-Talia existing on a tablet.


    "Good luck," Sam said, though it sounded a lot more like a question.


    I gave her a nod and cycled the lock. I held my breath as the door in front of me opened and I got my first sight of a station docking arm from a system listed as anarchy.


    I have no idea why I expected the docking arm to look different. I''m not even sure how I expected it to look different. Maybe trash everywhere, maybe painted murals, maybe armed thugs. A docking arm that looked like every other docking arm I''ve ever encountered just kind of wasn''t what I was expecting. I rounded the corner into the main passage until I reached what was not an O-deck. Being as all this was attached to a ship, it made sense that it wasn''t built with the whole O-deck system, instead the docking arms connected into something of a concourse. A few helpful signs pointed out where various things were: residential sector, business sector, restaurants, hotels, and a line for visiting spacers. I assumed I was a visiting spacer, so I went that way where I found myself checking in at a kiosk for a visitor''s visa. How strange. I wasn''t the only person here, but despite the fact that a couple of people were armed, this looked like any other place where people were trying to book passage. Of course, we weren''t booking passage; we were getting into the station. I plugged in some credentials, thumbed my tab, and for 25 Sen, I had a two-day visa and a map of the station that told me where I was and was not allowed to visit.


    I followed the line of people as well as the map and decided to walk into the first bar I came across, mostly because it was the first actual business I came across. I figured why not a bar? I could go get a drink, talk to somebody who knew more about the system and the rules in an anarchy. I made it through the lock. I found it strange that a bar needed a lock, but when the inner door opened and I took a few steps in, realization hit me like a ton of lead blocks drifting in the vacuum of space, or more accurately, like a room full of tobacco smoke so thick I couldn''t breathe. My eyes went wide, and as I started choking, I stumbled back into the lock. I had to get out of here. Stumbling out of the lock, I almost crashed into a couple who had been waiting at the other side.


    "Huh? First time in Liberty Station?" The man asked.


    I looked up at him, "Yeah," I said hoarsely, trying not to cough in his face.


    He tapped a yellow sign on the side of the lock that had a picture of a lit cigarette and a yellow caution tag that generally represented a hazardous atmosphere. "Try Tony''s Place. Fourth door to the left."


    I choked out a thanks as they disappeared into the lock. I got a couple of people chuckling at my plight, and I made my way further into the habitation module attached to the ship. I found Tony''s Place, a certainly more inviting-looking establishment, mostly because it had windows into the passage and an open door. It wasn''t deserted, but I certainly wasn''t here during rush hour. I had no idea what station time was. Being as it was a ship, it might have been on Earth standard. That would have made it sometime in the morning. I sat down at the bar, and a short man with light tanned skin and an apron made his way to me.


    "Morning, spacer."


    "Morning," I choked out.


    He laughed. "First time on Liberty Station?"


    "Yeah. How''d you know?"


    He chuckled again. "You ain''t the first guy to walk into the first bar you saw, then come crawling to me."


    I had to laugh as well.


    "What¡¯ll you have?"


    "Honestly, something to scrape out my throat would be great."


    ¡°Beer or Soda if you want carbonation. Hard liquor if you want to burn it out.¡±


    ¡°Mmm, got a cherry soda?¡±


    He nodded, grabbed a plastic cup, and put it under a machine to dispense some ice and a fizzy red liquid.


    "Anything to eat with it?"


    "What do you serve?"


    "Burgers primarily, but I can throw a fried egg on one if you want.¡±


    ¡°Sounds good. With the egg please. Two of them, one in a take out container if I can?"


    The bartender nodded, wrote down the order, handed it to a guy through a window, and then moved on to serve a refill for another guy.


    I sat back and waited for the food, letting the sugary fizzy drink scrub away the taste of toxic chemicals. What kind of fucked up person smokes? What kind of fucked up establishment makes a bar where everybody can smoke? They had to go through tons of filters.


    "Need a refill?"


    I looked down at my half-empty cherry soda and shrugged. "Why not?" I said, pushing the glass towards him. He took it back to the machine.


    "I got a question if you don''t mind."


    "Shoot."


    "What is it like living in an anarchy system?"


    He set the cup back down in front of me and shrugged. "Anarchy just means there isn''t one government for the whole system. Liberty Station''s run by Carl Mathers. Punishments for most crimes are exile. It''s pretty easy to keep tabs on who comes and goes when you only run a station. Other than that, I suppose it''s much like everywhere else."


    That actually didn''t help me much. "What about people coming in from a different sector who are wanted for something?"


    "You got a bounty on your head?" He asked with a suspicious squint, but the friendly grin he gave me had me thinking he was just teasing.


    "Quite literally asking for a friend. One of those things where they got conned into doing something illegal and now they spend their entire lives on a single station, bored to death and keeping their head down."


    The bartender nodded to a guy, acknowledging that he''d go give him a refill of whatever he was drinking as soon as he was done speaking to me. "A crime somewhere else isn''t necessarily a crime here. Let''s say your friend murdered somebody in, oh, I don''t know, Abilene. They show up here, get a job, and live a normal life. Station authorities don''t have a problem with them because they¡¯re not a problem on station. However, nothing stops a bounty hunter from collecting the bounty, and station authorities ain''t gonna protect them, and because a lot of people think they can come out to some anarchical system to hide from what they''ve done, there''s a lot of bounty hunters out here."


    With that, he left me to go take care of the other customers. A minute later, my food came out, and I was happy to take the break to eat. It was delicious, and it wasn''t Sam''s cooking, not that Sam was a bad cook, but it was nice to have something different.


    ***


    "And because of that, there actually tends to be a lot of bounty hunters out here," I told Sam. She unhappily glared at her burger. After I had eaten, I took a walk around some of the shops and art galleries for a little while before growing bored and annoyed with all the people. I am not a people person. I did three things on Liberty Station: I got some basic information on what an anarcho system was like. I lined up some cargo to be delivered to a station closer to where we are heading because we needed money. And I purchased a mining laser. There was some childish part of me that loved the thought that I had a freaking laser. The adult part of me looked at the safety instructions and sighed, but if we were gonna try mining, I needed tools to do it. The mining laser was the lowest form of tool, which meant the cheapest. I had come back, but not managed to actually get Sam her burger breakfast before people were ready to deliver cargo. Said cargo was about 10 crates of beer because apparently that''s what a derelict starship turned space station exported: beer.


    News about large numbers of bounty hunters wasn''t exactly promising for our current plans, but as long as we laid low, I was hopeful that things would be fine for at least a little while.


    "Is your bounty higher now?" Sam asked after swallowing a mouthful of burger.


    "Hells, I hope not." I looked towards the tablet. "X-Talia?"


    The avatar got a faraway look and made a "hmm" sound, which did not fill me with hope. The screen changed to display my face and the price on my head.


    "Damn," Sam said. "20K."


    "How the heck is that fair?" I grabbed hold of the tablet and started reading over the data. Apparently, the former bounty hunter, now organic debris heading towards a sun, had told the station authorities at the last station who was flying the ship. I was now being charged for malicious intent to cause harm by dropping a bunch of lead blocks in a shipping lane. That was unfair. 20K. Between me and Sam, we were about 50K. add the ship and X-Talia, even for almost scrap, it might be a whole 100K. We were basically the next bounty hunter¡¯s payday. I put my head to the table and muttered, "Son of a bitch." Sam reached over and patted me on the back. I kept my head down for another solid minute or two before X-Talia returned to her place on the screen and informed me that it was now time to enter the Rift. At least there was that.


    "Come on," Sam said once we fell in and were surrounded by the brilliant colors, which seemed oddly more colorful today, but I didn''t know if that was a good or bad thing.


    "Where?" I asked.


    "Just come on." She grabbed me by the arm and pulled. I followed somewhat reluctantly down into the cargo bay.


    "X-Talia, can you find ''Injured by Pretty Group¡¯ off my tablet and play it over the ship comms?"


    X-Talia didn''t reply, but she must have heard because music started playing. It was fairly calm considering what Sam usually listened to, a bit upbeat. I wasn''t really a music guy, and I was just as confused as to why I was standing in the cargo bay listening to music as I was mystified at the band''s name.


    "What are we doing?" I asked, as Sam grabbed one arm, placed herself in front of me, and entangled her other arm in mine.


    "Dancing," she replied cheerfully.


    "Dancing?" I repeated, puzzled.


    "Yeah. We made it to a station without getting attacked. I thought we could do something fun to celebrate."


    "And dancing is fun?" It seemed weird to me. Seemed like a girl thing to me. I''m not sure any guy ever thought dancing was fun. There had to be somebody, but it wasn''t me.


    "Just come on and let me lead," Sam said as she started moving.


    I stared down into Samantha Draken''s glowing ember eyes while standing in a cargo bay, being literally pushed around by the girl. How long have we been together? It had been at least two months, two or more months, and now we were dancing together in the cargo bay. Was she trying to woo me? Or was it just because she was lonely? I guess those weren''t mutually exclusive. After a couple more songs, all of which I had never heard before, she leaned in and gave me a tight hug.


    "Thank you for breakfast and dancing," she said as she pulled back, looked at me, and gave me a quick kiss on the cheek. "Go on, go play your damn game."


    I had a laugh. We split ways at the top of the ladder. Four days until we were in the next system.

 13: Warm Welcome 2

    "B6Y," X-Talia said.


    "Uh," Sam whined in consternation, "you blew up my destroyer. This is totally not fair."


    To be fair, the computer probably had an optimal pattern for searching for targets in the little space battleship game they had going on. Factor in that X-Talia was supposed to be some type of human interaction machine, and she pretty much already figured out where Sam had placed her ships. Poor Sam didn''t have a chance.


    "Jeez, this isn''t going anywhere," I complained, scrapping my current project and refreshing the screen to start over.


    "What do you got so far?" Sam asked as she stared at her tablet, trying to figure out where X-Talia''s ships might be.


    "Bridge, galley, engineering, space for a shield generator, and I want redundant environmental systems in each major compartment," I replied.


    "D12X," Sam said to X-Talia. "What about a cargo bay?" she said to me.


    "I really don''t know. I didn¡¯t have one on the flying brick, but I''m kind of getting used to the extra space," I said.


    "Miss," X-Talia said, grinning at Sam.


    "Maybe we should focus on the rooms that we have. What exactly do you hate about this one?"


    I sat back in my seat and tried to organize how I wanted to respond to this.


    "Well, first of all, I hate having berthing so far away from the bridge. It''d be nice to have redundant environmental systems in each of the sections. And I guess I''d like a little more room in the bridge and galley. We don''t even use berthing."


    X-Talia called out a number, and Sam responded with a miss, much to the splicer''s relief.


    "So, we wanna expand the galley, maybe put the crew quarters off it. Make the bridge a little roomier too, I think," I suggested.


    "Yeah, that seems fine to me, but what about the rest of the ship? Does the lock have to be in front?" Sam asked.


    "No," I answered.


    Sam called out a number to X-Talia and missed before she returned her attention back to me. "Is this kind of a blue-sky thing? Just say what we want and add it to the list."


    I hadn''t actually thought of it that way, but I guess I should have asked if Sam wanted anything in particular.


    "Um, I guess, for the moment at least.¡±


    ¡°I''d like a full medical lab and maybe a hot tub," Sam said.


    "A hot tub?" I repeated.


    "Well, I like a pool, but I figured that was a little too much," Sam explained.


    I shrugged and added it to my list of things to put into the ship. X-Talia called out a number, and Sam gritted her teeth. "Hit," she said. "Honestly, we don''t really use the berthing area, and we could almost cut the size of the captain¡¯s quarters in half," Sam mused. "Maybe four rooms off the galley: three crew quarters. One of them could be a guest quarters or expansion if we ever hire somebody, one can be a medical lab, and of course, we definitely need a head. Hmmm."


    ¡°It seems like I want too much. I''m trying to design a ship, and I don''t know what I want the ship to do. The flying brick had a small bunk, small galley, small head, and Sany-box, a cockpit instead of a bridge, and another very small¡­ I can''t even call it a room, just kind of an alcove in the galley where I could stick my chair. It always seemed like plenty of room, but I''ve kind of grown to like being able to walk around.¡±


    "We should get, like, an entertainment system, then we can play games and stuff together. Instead of just watching you lie like a vegetable in your chair," Sam said, motioning towards my chair and throwing a number at X-Talia, who grinned and said, "Miss."


    I screwed around with the ship design a bunch more, but never really got anywhere. I reverted to flipping through other ship designs. The only thing I was certain of was that I wanted several slots where I could attach freight containers that could be swapped out for shield generators or drone bays or something.


    "Random idea," X-Talia said before turning into an egg-shaped thing painted to look like a fat little version of her avatar. The egg thing popped open, and another slightly smaller one popped out of it, which popped open and another even smaller one came out.. "What about more like a nesting doll situation? Have a single main ship, small and compact, maybe just kind of a cockpit-bridge-galley situation that attaches into a larger superstructure?"


    I thought about it, but really wasn''t sure. "Seems like a lot of redundant systems and mass."


    X-Talia shrugged. "Sam slammed her hand against the table. ¡°Long hauler!¡±


    "What?"


    "There''s a long hauler design where the shipping containers are all attached to a solid spine. The front two containers are living quarters. Everything else is in a container."


    I cocked an eyebrow. I don''t know if I like the idea of having a ship with a very long spine. Again with the mass and whatnot, but it would be nice to just slot things in and to have a lot of slots. I''m seriously gonna consider that.


    We spent the next couple of weeks falling in and out of the Rift and stopping at stations with our drop-off-pickup-and-go tactic. We were flying the ship under the Res-a-tesseract name again and at each station it was Rick James who was getting paid. My personal account was basically empty, so it was pointless to go inside the station since I couldn''t actually thumb for anything. It was a considerable annoyance, but after another month of travel, we were damn close to reaching the very edge of nowhere. We drifted through an uninhabited system, only a couple of days'' Rift journey to our final destination. It was a place to change course and maybe see if there was anybody out here mining. Looking at the designs for miners, most did not have Rift drives, which meant with the Res-a-tesseract, if we get it outfitted for mining, we could hop into an uninhabited system like this, do some mining, and then hop back. It was one thing that would give us an advantage, but I wasn¡¯t sure that the quality over quantity thing worked unless the system had some type of precious material that wasn''t widely available in another. Chances of that were kind of slim, but it cost us nothing to drop off into a system, get an idea of what celestial bodies were around, and then hop out. Our four-hour recharge finished before we received a transmission.


    Words came over the speakers in an incoherent babble. I looked up at the screen, wondering if X-Talia was going to translate. She seemed to catch sight of me. Again, it was odd as she wasn''t actually seeing me from the screen, she would be watching from the cameras in various locations. She held up a finger. "Hold on." When the message stopped and I thought X-Talia was going to translate, the message started again in what sounded like a different language. X-Talia frowned. "Okay. I think I got it." She popped the words up on a screen, but I didn''t need to read it because the next cycle was in my own tongue.


    "Unidentified vessel. This is the Zatochi Warship, Sea of Agony and Torment. You have entered Zotochi controlled space. Leave immediately or be obliterated."


    I turned to look at Sam, who stared back at me, her expression mildly horrified. "Where is it?" Sam asked, turning her attention back to the screen that had X-Talia''s avatar.


    "Hold on. These sensors kind of suck. They''re quite far out," X-Talia replied.


    That gave me a bit of hope. If they were far out, we had plenty of time to ditch. X-Talia brought up an image on a grainy screen. The light from the system''s primary was at just the right angle, and the ship was lit up, but it was so far out there that I could barely make out what it looked like. On a second screen, X-Talia put up an extrapolation slowly revealing a large boxy type structure that looked like it had some type of large swiveling weapon on the front and wings made of large metal slabs that made it look like it was holding shields out to its sides. Being so far out, I figured I had plenty of time to interact with them. I waited for the message to finish cycling through the various languages before replying.


    "Sorry, we''re new to this sector. You wouldn''t happen to have a map of other places you control. So we don''t go there?" I gave X-Talia a shrug in response to her frown. "How long will that take for them to get the message and be able to send something back?"


    "About 47 minutes."


    "Okay, let''s plot a course and be ready to open up a Rift in say, one hour."


    X-Talia gave a nod and plotted some directions for me to follow.


    48 minutes later, I got a reply. It wasn''t anything other than a star chart with a large swath of stars highlighted in green. We were in one of those green star systems, so I assume that belonged to the Za¡¯ochi or whatever the hell they called themselves. We fell into the Rift and off to our next destination, our final destination.


    ¡°So, aliens?"


    Sam snorted. X-Talia just gave me a shrug.


    "Yeah, probably not," I said, more towards Sam. "You figure if humanity actually met aliens, that news would have gotten out. They also didn''t seem that unfriendly considering they sent us a star chart of where to keep out."


    "Something to look up when we get to where we''re going."


    Our final destination was Rixa. Rixa was an orange dwarf star that cast an amber light over the system. It consisted of three rocky inner worlds, an asteroid belt, and an exterior Jovian with truly impressive rings.


    The first world was a molten orb that the locals seemed to call The Forge. The second world was one of those pristine candidates for terraforming; gravity was about point seven five standard, and it had a magnetosphere. The atmosphere was mostly carbon dioxide, and people had flocked there and built cities with the expectation that terraforming would happen, but it never did, leaving Rixa-2 or Aurelia, as the locals called it, a barren wasteland full of poor people. Rixa-3 or Nexus seemed to be the trade hub of the system. Odd when you consider that the gravity was point six standard, it had no atmosphere, and nothing else that seemed to be really going for it. Then again, it was a trade hub and had a lot of industry on the surface.


    That was another thing about this sector that blew my mind. A lot of these ships were designed to land on the surface of a planet. The Res-a-tesseract was not, even if it was physically possible. It didn''t have anything to land on. As far as I knew, landing on a planetary body was illegal unless you had specific non-gravitational thrust abilities, which just seemed like a waste of mass. For those who had business on the surface, but didn''t have the ability to land a ship on the planet itself, there were several space elevators. Perhaps that''s why the planet has become the economic center of the system. The low gravity and stability of the planet itself made it ideal for space elevators and whatever came with them. It seemed to have a single moon, which was nothing more than an asteroid engineered to be a massive space station. For as backward as these people seemed to supposedly be, they liked to make big structures that didn''t look like the standard cookie-cutter orbitals.


    You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.


    We were not the inner planets though. No, we were out by the Jovian. Azor was a gorgeous light blue with swirls of various other colors and its rings were stunning. It was the primary mining place of the Free Light Mining Consortium. They had several refineries in a large station orbiting the planet. For the moment, that was our home. The consortium didn''t particularly care if some people were independent miners. So it wasn''t like we had to fight anybody for a claim or that we could actually claim anything. It was really just go in, mine what you could, and sell to the consortium. At least that''s what we were told. We hadn''t successfully done any of it yet.


    The mining laser was the lowest form of mining tool. The safety instructions had specified that the user should be wearing a fully armored hard suit at a bare minimum. I didn''t have a fully armored hard suit. I had what the bounty hunter was wearing with a couple of patches where I''d stuck holes. It didn''t take long to figure out why the safety documents wanted the user to be fully armored. Apparently, superheating various metals and other mineral deposits caused miniature explosions. I assumed that would be greater or lesser depending on what type of material we were attempting to mine. I don''t know what type of material this was. I just knew that the scanner said it was a large deposit of metal, and X-Talia said we could probably sell it.


    Three hours spent tethered partially to an asteroid and fully to the Res-a-tesseract, and I was pretty much ready to give up mining. Maybe if we had enough money to buy a drone so that I could just sit in the ship while this was done automatically. Floating uncomfortably in an itchy spacesuit with bits of rock exploding outward and pinging off my helmet was not doing it for me. As if the universe wanted to punish me just a bit more for my attempt at honest work, I got to see the largest explosion yet.


    I''m pretty sure I screamed in pain as hot fire slammed into my left leg and sent me spinning. I dropped the mining laser, which was fine. It was tethered to my suit and powered off when the trigger wasn''t depressed. I gritted my teeth and stared through teary eyes down at the large hand-sized shard of rock or metal or whatever the fuck sticking out of my leg. I wrapped one hand around it and was about to pull before I realized that would be a terrible fucking idea. I spent the next thirty seconds or so frantically trying to keep the tether from looping around the rock. Once I was untethered from the asteroid, I started pulling myself in towards the ship. A little too fast. I hit the edge of the lock and screamed again as the rock in my leg was jostled once more. I could hear Sam and X-Talia speaking in my suit''s comm, but I was a little preoccupied with getting myself into an actual livable atmosphere before the thing impaling me came out, along with all my fluids. After the lock shut, I could see the flashing lights that meant we were trying to repressurize the whole thing, which would take forever because the cargo bay was fucking huge. Some semblance of gravity started to pull me down to the decking. I found myself lying on my back and staring at the ceiling, sound finally starting to hit me as the room filled with enough atmosphere for vibrations.


    It took forever, endless waiting, the time made only longer by the fiery, lancing pain shooting through my leg. As soon as the klaxon stopped, I heard Sam rushing down the ladder and saw the familiar red face pop in front of me from the other side of the helmet''s faceplate. She grabbed hold of my head and started unlatching things.


    "Are you hurt anywhere other than your leg?" Sam asked, her voice quick and professional and honestly lacking a lot of the panic I was expecting.


    "No," I gritted out between clenched teeth.


    "Good. X-Talia, reduce gravity to 1/6," she commanded.


    I felt my weight cease to exist for just a moment, and then Sam shoved her arms underneath me and picked me up. Oh, great, I get to be princess carried. Sam awkwardly climbed the ladder, carried me into the medical closet, and unceremoniously dropped me on the table.


    "X-Talia, one standard, please," she said as her fingers worked at my suit. To be perfectly honest, it felt great to get it off of me, hot and sweaty on the inside, but I didn''t like the way she swore when she got down to the legs. "I need your ass up," she said, sounding like it was going to be an ordeal.


    I attempted to oblige and had more pain shoot through my leg. Apparently, it was going to be an ordeal. With the suit taken away from my back, I could momentarily revel in the cold of the table. I felt the boots come off, and Sam worked my good leg out. That meant she now had to work the bad leg out.


    "Hey, Grant."


    "Yeah."


    "Sorry."


    I was gonna ask what she was sorry for when she grabbed hold of the rock and ripped it out. I swear the damn thing hurt worse coming out than it did going in. After a small scream, which did not at all sound very manly, I looked down to see Sam packing some type of foam into the hole before trying to chuck the suit off my leg. I assume the foam was to stop it from bleeding because it wasn''t gushing blood, so there was that. She then pressed some device up against the hole, which hurt, and then swore, which made me think things were gonna hurt worse.


    ¡°Don''t you have any anesthetic?" I said through gritted teeth.


    "Not anything good," she replied, searching through a kit and pulling out a few items. I lifted my head back up to look at her just as she shoved a metal tool into my leg. I dropped my head back with another short scream and fought the darkness that encroached in my sight, blocking off my peripheral.


    "I got it," Sam said just a moment before I heard a loud ¡®tink¡¯ of something hard falling into a dish. More foam and bandages followed.


    I lay back, my head on the table, pain radiating out of my leg. "Well, doc, am I gonna live?"


    "Yeah. Don''t do that again. I told you I''m not a thoracic surgeon or abdominal surgeon or really any kind of surgery other than, like, face and stuff. I can do liposuction," Sam said.


    Despite the pain, I had to chuckle. "Well, at least it won¡¯t get any worse for a few moments."


    That¡¯s when X-Talia chimed in. "You just had to say that right now, didn''t you?"


    The annoyance in her voice made me pause. "Why?" I asked.


    "Because we''ve been scanned multiple times by a ship that''s not broadcasting a transponder code."


    ¡°It¡¯s not that stealth ship is it?¡± Sam asked. A stupid question considering said ship was missing most of its insides.


    "They are slowly drifting in our direction and scanning us. No, it''s not the stealth ship," X-Talia responded.


    "Can we get more details other than a ship is scanning us?" I asked.


    "A shuttle-sized craft with external guns and presenting no transponder codes is scanning us," X-Talia replied, sounding kind of annoyed.


    I rolled my eyes and looked at Sam. "Can you help me get to the bridge, please?"


    Sam looked down at my leg then back to my face before making an exasperated expression that only a woman could master.


    "X-Talia, can I get 0.75 G," Sam said.


    I could almost chuckle with the way she flipped from fractions to decimals. Sam helped me off the table, and I leaned against her as I limped my way through the door and across the catwalk. The ship was so terribly designed.


    "They''ve sent us a voice message," X-Talia announced.


    "Play it," I said.


    "Res-atract, Resr-teser-tact, Resta whatever the fuck your ship''s name is, state your business and affiliation," the voice on the other end was male, and I almost laughed as I listened to the guy trip over the ship''s unpronounceable name.


    "When we get into the galley, turn off the lights in the cargo bay and anything else behind us. Can you respond with something that sounds automated? I don''t know. Tell them we''re an AI controlled drone ship and we''re doing geology or something. I don''t know," I instructed.


    "Suuurrre," X-Talia said, drawing out the word before playing her response for us. It started with a chime. "Greetings unidentified vessel. This is Syracuse Mining Corporation prospecting droneship four. Current objectives are to gather information on the rings mineral composition," X-Talia spoke once more clearly addressing us. How is that?"


    ¡°Great." Sam helped me into the galley, and we shut the hatch behind us. Never did the small galley seem like such a big space when you had to cross it with your leg throbbing in pain with each heartbeat.


    "Rest-a-trick. This is Rixa system authority. Cut power and prepare for boarding," came the next message.


    Shit. Now what? I looked at Sam, who looked horrified, as if reading my mind, X-Talia said, "Now, what?"


    "Give me a second to think," I groaned as I sat down in the pilot''s chair and tried to organize my thoughts around the pain. "Is he actually System Authority?" I asked.


    "System Authority is handled by the Sentinel Mercenary Company. Chances of this ship being a mercenary company vessel is extraordinarily low. I suspect a pirate," came the response.


    We knew there were pirates in the area and that they were a recurring pain in the ass for many miners and transporters. Hadn''t expected to actually have to deal with them so soon, as the Sentinel Mercenary Company made frequent patrols of the rings. Huh. He wanted to board us. "Ok. Here''s an idea. Can you respond by telling him no, but make it sound like he actually could and that there would be no repercussions if he did?"


    "Uh, sure," X-Talia said before the chime came again, "Boarding this vessel is against company policy and unsafe due to a lack of atmosphere in the cargo hold," the message ended with a chime again.


    "I feel like I''m walking into a mall," Sam said.


    "Reest-a-tect, I insist on boarding for routine check," came the response.


    "Tell them you''ll comply with all System Authority bullshit."


    "This vessel will comply with all System Authority orders. Please proceed with caution as the cargo bay is in vacuum.¡±


    ¡°Sam, can you run and get the hard suit and the guns then close the hatch and we''ll actually deal with the cargo hold?"


    She gave me a nod before getting up and heading out. I sat back in my chair and winced. I think I might have an idea.


    I watched on the tablet as our friendly neighborhood System Authority guy, who was definitely not friendly or a System Authority guy, docked with us. Slowly and cautiously, he boarded the empty ship, drifting weightless throughout the cargo hold while looking around with a flashlight. My heart pounded in my chest, which only caused my leg to throb quicker. This sucked. The guy made his way up the ladder and got himself firmly planted in front of the door to the galley before he tried to throw the lock. Fortunately, it was electronically sealed when there was a difference in pressure between the two rooms.


    "Rest-at-rict. In order to do a thorough inspection, I need access to the ship," the guy told the ship, which was forwarded into my helmet.


    X-Talia replied, again starting with the chime. "The galley is pressurized, the cargo hold is not. Opening the door now would cause explosive decompression. Would you like me to repressurize the cargo hold?"


    The guy groaned over the mic. ¡°Yes, pressurize the damn cargo hold."


    "Please stand by as repressurizing the cargo hold will take several minutes."


    He groaned over the comms. Didn''t say anything, just groaned. I understood his frustration. There was a lot of volume in the cargo hold, and the fact that we could store that much breathable atmosphere in small containers still amazed me.


    Cargo bay filled, the electronic lock disengaged, the man threw the lever, opened up the galley hatchway, and walked in. As expected, he focused more on the kitchen area than the alcove to the left. That was his mistake. Three steps in and the lights turned on. I heard him swear through his suit. I, of course, had been ready for this. Sitting back in my gaming chair, armor-piercing rounds in my pilfered lead thrower, and the polarity on my face shield nearly maxed. Over my suit speaker, I said, "Freeze, drop the weapon."


    The guy practically jumped out of his skin. I suppose walking into a dark ship that was supposed to be just a drone, only to have the lights come on and somebody yell at you would be pretty terrifying. He did not drop the gun. However, he started swinging it towards me, and I thought I was gonna have to shoot him. He aborted the action when he noticed I was in a hard suit and not holding an Arc pistol like he was, instead throwing both his arms in the air.


    "I said drop the weapon," I repeated.


    Hesitantly, he actually dropped the damn thing.


    "Out of the hard suit. Now," I ordered.


    "Well, hold on there, buddy," he said.


    "No, not your buddy, not your friend. Get out of the hard suit. This here has armor-piercing rounds. It won''t protect you. You can either let me shoot you with this, in which you will die, or you can get rid of the hard suit, and I get to switch over to an Arc pistol, in which case you won''t die. Your choice."


    "I''m with System Authority," he claimed.


    "Yeah? Well I¡¯m with emperor Mung of the Jalapeno Empre. Hard suit off. You got to the count of 10 to comply.¡± Emperor Mung? Where the hell did I get that from.


    The guy started stripping, which was a relief because I didn''t actually want to shoot him. This would be a pretty simple open-shut case. Pirate walks into our ship, tries to take it over, we defend the ship, and we drop them off with the Sentinel Mercenary group, preferably a ship instead of a station, so we don''t have to spend a lot of time. We go on our merry way. Hell, maybe there''s a bounty we can collect. That would be nice, and now that my pirate friend here was complying, we''d be able to tie him up, throw him in a room, and do that. It would take maybe 12, 14 hours, and I''d actually be able to get rid of a guy without killing him. Yeah, this was gonna go okay.

 14a: Warm Welcome 3a

    Things never go smoothly. For that reason, I kept waiting for something to go wrong. Nothing bad happened to the ship. I reinstalled the camera into the head near the captain¡¯s quarters, and we locked our prisoner in there just like I had been. For the most part, he sat there and waited. I kept waiting for him to escape. I kept waiting for his friends to find us and attack. I kept waiting for system authorities to come after us. Meeting the system authorities, or more specifically, one of the ships run by the Sentinel Mercenary Company went off without a hitch. We sent them a brief description of what happened along with the guy''s name and a picture, and they simply set up an intercept where we could rendezvous and hand them over. I brought the guy into the cargo hold, the two ships locked, and as nervous as I had been, they just took him and left me with nothing more than a ¡®thank you¡¯. We also gave them the telemetry on where the pirate ship was. To be fair in this, we didn''t actually give them the correct telemetry. X-Talia created a fake entry which would put the pirate ship in a fairly large area of space, giving us plenty of time to get back to said ship and take it for ourselves. If you''re gonna be a pirate, you might as well pirate the pirates that try to pirate you. Again, every fucking thing went off without a hitch. I felt like some figurative version of Karma was gearing up for battle and loading all its weapons to be brought down against me. Getting into the pirate ship and taking over its controls wasn''t even hard. I found myself for the next three days deep in the Neuro helmet running simulations on how to land said ship onto Rixa-3. This is where I figured things would go wrong.


    Murray''s junkyard was the shadiest place I could find in the system willing to take a fully intact ship with no questions asked. The problem was that it was on Rixa-3 and I was gonna have to get the damn ship down there. The damn ship itself had the capability of landing on a world up to one standard gravity. Three days of simulations was apparently more than enough to prepare me for this trip. A planet with no atmosphere and low gravity turned out to be a cakewalk. I had to put planetary landing capability on my list of things I wanted my new ship to do. For all the stress and agony I felt well, actually trying to do the maneuver was simple. Arguing with Murray over a price was considerably more difficult. I was perfectly honest about it being a pirate ship and how we got it. Murray used my honesty to start the price off so low that I was tempted to fly it back up, until he finally relented at 15,000, which was fucking pennies, and 5000 in credit for shit in his junkyard. I accepted primarily because his junkyard had a few working mining drones and there was no fucking way I was going back out to an asteroid and trying to cut away with the damn mining laser again.


    I spent my time on Rixa-3 waiting for something to go wrong because something was gonna have to go wrong. This was too easy. X-Talia docked the Res-a-tesseract at the top of an elevator and I made my way up the shaft. A two hour long ride followed by an additional hour to get my baggage, a full pallet of stuff. A replenishment order of food and the like was coming to the Res-a-tesseract via station chandlery, but I was pulling the two mining drone units, several collector limpets, a charging station, some extra server racks that X-Talia needed in order to control everything had a couple odds and ends that the AI requested. We loaded everything up and by some miracle, we were left completely unmolested. Something had to go wrong.


    ***


    Sam''s eyes flicked over towards the head again. My assumption was that she had to pee. I also assumed that once we''d finished this hand, she would excuse herself for a minute and actually go. Of course, you know what they say about assumptions. She shuffled the cards again, pressed her lips together and set the deck of cards we had been playing with aside.


    "Grant?"


    I cocked an eyebrow at her. "Sam?"


    She seemed to hesitate for a moment before opening her mouth to speak. "I want to discuss something, but I don''t want to make it weird again."


    I took a moment to consider that, but she had said that there was something she wanted to discuss and now it had to be done whether it was gonna make things weird or not. "Well, now you better spit it out."


    She nodded and took a deep breath, no doubt preparing herself for whatever was on her mind. "I want to discuss our relationship."


    ¡°Relationship?¡± I took a quick glance over to the tablet. It had been left there so X-Talia could join us, but at the moment, the screen was empty. There was no doubt in my mind she was still listening in, but apparently controlling the drones took some extra processing power.


    "Yes, our relationship," she inhaled again. "I consider you at least my friend and I''d like it to be more."


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    Well, shots fired. She opened up with a quick volley on her flyby and left me reeling, trying to figure out whether I should counter her attack or just raise shields and dive through it. I loaded missiles and retaliated. "I assume that''s just because you''re stuck on the ship and I''m the only person around that you don¡¯t need to worry about attacking you."


    Her eyes went slightly wide, and she leaned back in her chair, crossing her arms. Clearly, shields were up, but my words had been loaded with a dose of high explosive truth. She wasn''t just gonna be able to deny that. "Yes, I know you due to forced proximity, but that doesn''t mean I can''t like you."


    An admirable deflection. In many ways, it was a fair point, but I had to bring my forward guns to bear and return fire. "You have no other people with which to compare me with. I''m not even close to an ideal person."


    "You''re just scared of relationships."


    I opened my mouth to retaliate, but that shot had dug deep. Also, why was I thinking of this verbal sparring match as ship combat? She was right though, I barely knew how to handle her just because I didn''t know how to handle a friend, let alone someone I was attracted to. Sam picked up the cards again and shuffled them once more. I think she was trying to give me time to think of a comeback. I didn''t have one.


    "You''re right."


    She opened her mouth to speak, her ember eyes returning back to mine before her face shifted as though she had expected me to say something else. "Yeah. I am. Have you considered trying a relationship?"


    Short answer was no. "What do you want?"


    "I want things to stay vaguely as they are, but perhaps with a little more¡­ intimacy."


    "Like what?"


    Her eyes returned to the head, ¡°like occasional shower sex, but I''d settle for movie night. You know, we could try something."


    I stared at the girl in front of me. The hot goth succubus doctor chick wanted the mostly useless, completely average-looking idiot that kept getting himself in bigger and bigger messes. It was only due to the fact that I was the only one here.


    "I guess I can try."


    Sam gave me a pleased smile right before X-Talia said, "Finally." Both our heads turned to the screen displaying the little avatar girl. She was standing there, arms crossed and looking smug. She then turned her attention to me and stated, "You have a message."


    "I have a message?"


    "That''s what I said."


    "From who?"


    "Uh, David Sullivan."


    I had no idea who the fuck that was. "Ok. Play it."


    X-Talia shook her head. "It''s text only. Do you want me to read it to you or do you think you can read it yourself?"


    I glared at her, grabbed the tablet, then said, "Just show me the message." The tablet switched over to a text-only document, and I started reading. Only to notice Sam pushing her way across the table and trying to look down at the tablet at an awkward angle. I looked at her, waved her back, and started reading out loud from the beginning.


    "To Grand Takata. I caught that little trick you pulled with the pirate ship. Unfortunately for you, the local pirate gang and the Sentinel Mercenary Group are in a bit of an incestuous relationship. You pissed a lot of people off and you''re gonna have a few more people looking at that price that''s on your head. Attached is my com ID. Let me know next time you''re on the Freelight Mining Consortium station around Azore; we should talk. I''m not with the mercenaries, pirates, system authorities, or any bounty hunter affiliation. So no worries. Public venue, come unarmed. See you soon. David Sullivan."


    I looked up at Sam and cocked an eyebrow. She shrugged. We both looked at X-Talia.


    "X-Talia, can you scrape the local net for any type of reference to David Sullivan?"


    "Already working on it."


    We were far enough out into the planet''s rings that it would take a while to query the net and get some data back. It also might cost a couple credits or Sen, presumably that would be a tight beam. I sat back in my chair and scowled to myself. "So the mercenaries and the pirates are working together."


    Silence fell between the three of us, and it wasn''t the comfortable, companionable kind.


    "I got something back," X-Talia said, "but it''s nothing I would call useful. A couple charges, some court dates, and several business listings. Scanning the listings, they all seem a bit sketchy, but I can''t quite place why."


    "Ok. Well, this is a problem for when we wanna start heading back. How''s the cargo hold at the moment?"


    "Not even a quarter full."


    "Well, that''s still better than me out there with a mining laser trying not to become a pincushion," I said.


    X-Talia chuckled. Sam looked slightly concerned, and my leg throbbed.


    The message had killed whatever mood Sam was trying to go for, and neither of us really wanted to continue playing cards. We laid out my betting in the galley and propped the tablet up against my gaming chair. With the cargo hold depressurized, we were limited only to the galley, the bridge, and the head. Sam and I watched a movie, then two. I have to admit, it was actually kind of nice.

 14b: Warm Welcome 3b

    Revision Note: Consider combining this with 14


    -I''m in the central concourse.- I looked the message over before sending it. I was supposed to meet David Sullivan today, and I was honestly quite nervous. I had no idea how this was gonna go, but I was hoping to not get shot. The Free Light Mining Consortium station pretty much housed everything the miners needed: refineries, business offices, hotels, entertainment, goods, ship services, and more. Because the station was specialized to the mining company''s needs, the concourse looked less like an actual concourse for ingoing and outgoing traffic and more like a business center for scheduling, loading, pick up, and whatever else. From the docking arms, crews would come in all smiles and whatnot as they headed off for their leave to burn the credits they made harvesting asteroids. From the station side, very similar crews were heading back to the docking arms, faces grim and pockets likely empty.


    My tablet beeped, and I looked at the message: -follow the pretty Asian girl.- I slipped my tablet back into its pocket and scanned the fairly crowded concourse. I about jumped out of my skin when I found the pretty Asian girl, barely a full meter to my right. She was petite with pale skin, dark hair, and dark eyes. She wore a tight colorful t-shirt and a short black skirt that showed off her nice shapely legs. The girl smiled up at me and held out a hand. I''d assumed she had wanted to shake. As soon as my hand was clasped in hers, she started pulling, and I found myself walking down the passageways deeper into the entertainment section of the station?


    There was no way she was actually Asian. Most of the people around here were various shades of amalgamation, not a single one had her pale skin or petite frame. I don''t think you could get a petite frame via surgery, but the face was probably the same type of plastic surgery that would get Sam excited and her hair, eye, and skin color were probably due to some gene therapy. Then again, maybe she was Asian, an import from some other sector of space. My musings were broken when a security guard for some club asked if I was carrying any weapons. I stared up at the big bouncer guy. He wore a nicely tailored suit and was almost a head taller than I was with the matching thickness that made him perfectly proportional. "Uh," I said because I believed I was actually carrying a weapon.


    "We store them in the lockers. You''ll get a receipt," said the man.


    The guy seemed to just assume I had been carrying. Had I not hid the bulge well? I pulled out the arc pistol which got locked into box number 24 and he scrawled out a receipt before nodding to the little asian girl who pulled me through the doors into a loud flickering room bathed in entirely too much purple.


    It was a rather large space with a second-story balcony that overlooked the dance floor. A very long bar was stashed on one side of the room and there was a spattering of tables close to what must have been a kitchen door. It was filled with people who were drinking and laughing in the booths and a large number on the dance floor writhing their bodies in time to a beat. I honestly found it a bit annoying. The Asian girl dragged me around the corner up a flight of stairs, the sound of the pulsating music and the sickening swirling lights dimmed considerably, likely due to some type of technological magic. She pulled me up in front of a booth where I can only assume I got my first glance at the man known as David Sullivan.


    He was a taller, thinner guy. His dark hair was cut short, and his face was clean-shaven. He wore a nice suit. Both the man''s eyes and that of the blonde snuggled into him turned towards me when the petite Asian girl shoved me up to the table. A wide grin spread across his face, and he held out his hand to shake. I took it instinctively. "You must be Grant Takata," he said.


    "Uh, yeah," I replied.


    He turned his gaze to the Asian girl. "Why don''t you get our friend here a drink?"


    "I don''t drink," I said.


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    "Something non-alcoholic," he instructed the girl, who scampered off. He motioned towards the seat across from him. "Have a seat, Mister Takata, and give me a moment, please."


    As I slid into my seat, the guy thumbed something, and the girl scooted out of the booth with a smile and a wink before making her way off into the crowd.


    "Ok. As you may have guessed, my name is David Sullivan.¡± The asian girl set my drink down and then scooted into the booth next to me. She put a hand on my thigh and grinned up at me. ¡°And this fine piece of ass," David continued, "Is X2." I gave the girl a double take and David must have known what I was thinking because he chuckled and said, "No, she''s human. But I do so love that expression."


    David leaned back in his seat and gave me an appraising stare. "I suppose you''re wondering why I wanted to talk to you. Mostly, it''s because you''re new. I call Rixa my home, and I''ve been making a habit of familiarizing myself with people who may or may not provide services I or people I know may find useful."


    This told me two things. Number one, this Mr. David Sullivan was fairly likely not on the correct side of the law. And number two, he had mistakenly pegged me as some type of criminal. Well, honestly, maybe that wasn''t much of a mistake, but I wasn''t actively engaging in criminal activity. I just found myself committing it.


    "Uh, okay," I replied, looking down at the Asian girl next to me who was staring up at me, smiling. Her hand was getting far too close to my crotch, and I forcefully took the offending appendage off my leg and put it on hers. She never lost the cute smile. It was only a matter of moments before her hand was on my leg again. Honestly, I was starting to find her a bit creepy.


    "Mr. Takata," I¡¯ll cut straight to the million Sen in question. "What are you doing out here in Rixa?"


    "Uh, mining," I replied.


    David cocked an eyebrow, and I again removed the offending hand of the cute Asian girl next to me and glared at her. ¡°X2.¡± David said, getting the girl''s attention. She then scooted out of the booth, moved over to David''s side, scooted in next to him, and cuddled underneath his arm. She still stared at me with a cute smirk. Very strange. "So you''re only here for mining?" David inquired.


    "Yes," I responded.


    "Ah, would I be correct in guessing you got on the wrong side of the law? Ran off to the furthest reaches you could and are trying to lie low?" David asked.


    I wanted to ask how he knew, but I didn''t think it would actually be that hard to figure out. A simple look at the systems I was in and where I was now pretty much told the story. "Pretty much," I admitted.


    David nodded his head. "So if I did have a job or two, say smuggle something to a different system, is that something you''d be interested in?"


    How did I answer this question? I didn''t know if David would be a valuable contact, but everything was pretty friendly so far. He was clearly on the criminal side of things, but I wasn''t sure I was going to be able to get back on the lawful side. Best I could do was hedge my bets. "Maybe, if the mining doesn''t work out," I responded.


    David took a sip of his drink and seemed to consider my response. "I can see that. Well, you have my contact information. If there''s something you need on the less than legal side of things, please keep me in mind. And do note, I''ll be keeping an eye on you. You''ve kind of run afoul of the local¡­ let''s call them armed forces. That whole thing with hiding the spaceship and selling it to Murray on Nexus. Only one here happy with that is Murray. Handing over your pirate alive was a good thing. You can pretty well bet your pirate is back out there in his ship playing the part of a pirate though. As far as I understand, he now owes Murray a hefty chunk of change for his ship." David laughed. "There''s a bit of a revolving door when it comes to employment between the pirates and the Mercs. You best watch yourself. Probably stay off Nexus for a while."


    I had a sense. This meeting was over. I looked at my untouched drink but decided just to duck out now. "Thank you. I''ll keep that in mind," I said.


    David gave me a nod and a smile. He groped X2''s breast and then asked her to see me out. Before I could protest, the little Asian girl with the weird name scooted out of the booth, grabbed my hand and started pulling me back towards the stairs. It wasn''t long before I found myself outside the club. My pistol back in its pocket. X2 waving goodbye. The whole time she had never said a word. As I made my way down the passage, the only thing I could think of was getting back on the Res-a-tesseract and taking a shower. Something seemed wrong. Unsettling. I couldn''t exactly place what or why. As kind of sleazy as David came off, it was the unsettling feeling that X2 gave me. I tried to put it out of my mind.

 15: Warm Welcome 4

    I pulled the gun from its 3D printed holster, snapped it out to its intended target, and pulled the trigger. The red point of a laser illuminated the small off-colored patch of wall panel I had been aiming at. This was a new exercise for me. At some point, I had concluded that I was a fairly decent shot. I could only assume this came from days worth of playing video games, and while I had the knowledge to use the weapon, I still lacked the necessary muscle memory to use it well. Fifteen minutes of this drawing, shooting, and then changing the magazine practice, and I was getting damn good and damn fast with my pilfered pistol. I occasionally practiced with the Arc pistol as well, since that was my less-lethal option. Sam was busy cooking lunch. X-Talia was busy using the three mining drones. We were collecting raw ore at a slightly faster rate than we had the last two trips. Currently, we weren¡¯t making much more than if we were just flying from station to station delivering cargo, but we were slowly gaining on that formula. After adding another couple of mining drones, we¡¯d be looking at attaching some type of freight container to the hull. That put redesigning the ship a little higher on the priority list, but at the moment we were probably just going to weld something to the ventral side.


    ¡°Uh, can you guys get to the bridge and maybe get ready for combat?¡± said X-Talia over the ship¡¯s internal communication system.


    Sam and I both took a half second to stare at each other before bolting across the galley and rushing onto the bridge. I had my soft suit halfway on before Sam had even locked the hatch door.


    ¡°What¡¯s going on?¡± I asked the room, hoping that X-Talia would hear me.


    ¡°Two vessels with Sentinel mercenary group transponder codes were on a flyby. They deactivated their transponders and turned towards us as soon as they noticed us.¡±


    ¡°Well, shit. Maybe we should start using the Flying Brick again, for a little while at least?¡± X-Talia¡¯s avatar gave me a nod from one of the screens before her image blanked out, replacing it with an extrapolation map of where she thought the two vessels might be.


    ¡°Did you withdraw the drones?¡± Sam asked.


    ¡°No, it totally slipped my mind,¡± X-Talia retorted. ¡°Of course, I withdrew the drones.¡±


    ¡°Disable safeties on the engines, please.¡±


    ¡°Done.¡±


    ¡°And let¡¯s turn off our transponder code. We¡¯ll hide behind the asteroid.¡±


    Despite every depiction of an asteroid belt being a rock-filled area where things constantly tumbled into each other, that was almost never the case. The spacing between asteroids was often so far apart that it was impossible to see one from another¡¯s location. The rings were a little different. All the asteroids hovering around Azore were tightly packed. Collisions were quite common, but nothing was moving at a very high relative velocity to anything else. There was plenty of room to maneuver when peacefully mining. A fast-paced dogfight, on the other hand, was likely to be a different story. I maneuvered the Res-a-tesseract behind the asteroid we had been working on, keeping just enough of the ship¡¯s sensors exposed that we could see the oncoming ships, provided they were actually coming.


    ¡°X-Talia, remind me to look into getting a couple drones or something that we could set out. Something with some sensors and relays so that we can do a better job of hiding.¡±


    ¡°Hm. That¡¯s a great idea. I should have thought of that?¡±


    Sam and I were both strapped into our seats in our soft suits. We didn¡¯t have to worry about evacuating the atmosphere from the cargo bay. It was already done. Our ammo was full and our heat sink was loaded. So if this was gonna come to a fight, we were as prepared as we could be. Nothing left but the waiting. I briefly considered moving the Res-a-tesseract to hide behind a different asteroid, but as the minutes passed, X-Talia glimpsed our pursuers and sure enough, they were heading directly towards us.


    ¡°Fuck,¡± X-Talia muttered. She put both ships up on a screen. The small one was bad enough. A small fighter, which likely had similar firepower to the Res-a-tesseract. Tiny antenna-looking things covered the larger ship, poking out all over its skin, giving it the appearance of a pufferfish with hair-like thorns, which were the telltale sign of shields. A small fighter and a damn gunboat.


    ¡°Is that the ship you sold to that junkyard?¡± Came Sam¡¯s flabbergasted voice, causing me to look at the screens and scrutinize the image more. It certainly looked the same.


    ¡°They¡¯re going to comm first, right?¡± I asked, not specifically to anyone. It may have been more for myself, but X-Talia did reply with an ¡°uh?¡±


    Then the fighter broke off from the gunboat, which inturn launched two small objects that skidded out sideways from the gunboat in the opposite direction of the fighter. They didn¡¯t even hail us first.


    I waited a few ticks, almost a full minute, before over-saturating the gravity emitters and launching the Res-a-tesseract backward, with the fore facing the incoming death tubes and the aft facing the incoming fighter. I had a stupid idea. Theoretically, the only sane option in this situation was to run. However, the Res-a-tesseract had crappy acceleration. We¡¯d never outrun the smaller ship, and it was unlikely we¡¯d be able to outrun the gunboat. If by some miracle we could take out the smaller fighter and continue on in that direction, maybe we could get past the gunboat and build up enough forward momentum to activate the Rift Drive and get the hell out of dodge. That was the hope, at least.


    The two missiles came around the asteroid, their long bodies pointed back towards the ship that launched them, making it look like they were trying to return home, but I knew enough about how things fell through the void to know they were only counteracting their momentum in one direction so they could switch it to a new direction, more specifically at the Res-a-tesseract. The enemy fighter made a similar correction, less noticeable because it didn¡¯t use a propellant thrust system to move, but it was no less effective in changing its course.


    I stared at the screens a moment longer and wondered if I had actually timed this correctly. I held down the triggers for the forward-mounted chain guns only a few seconds before rotating the ship backward and bringing the guns to bear on the fighter. We passed each other, tracer rounds flying between our ships as both vessels continued to point their faces at each other. Sam screamed, her terror-filled shriek sounding tinny over my helmet¡¯s comm as one of X-Talia¡¯s worried faces exploded, an errant round driving through the hull plating, the viewscreen, and then the bulkhead behind us. In an instant, the bridge¡¯s atmosphere dumped itself into the cold vacuum of space with a sound that was felt instead of heard. I didn¡¯t let it distract me. I kept the Res-a-tesseract pointed at its target, and more importantly, I thrust the ship downward, putting the two trailing missiles directly on the opposite side of the fighter.


    ¡°I can¡¯t believe that worked!¡± The fighter exploded into flashes of light, and it stopped firing at us, turning into a debris field. I stared for perhaps a moment too long, fascinated at how easy it had been to trick the missiles into slamming the wrong target. A moment later, my focus returned to the interior of the bridge.


    ¡°Sam, are you okay?¡±


    ¡°Um, I, I think so.¡±


    I turned my head to see her checking her suit, looking for any punctures. She seemed fine.


    ¡°X-Talia, damage report.¡±


    ¡°Hull breaches: cargo bay, bridge, galley, engineering. Damage to the water recycler.¡±


    Well, that sucked, but it didn¡¯t suck anywhere near as much as the other ship that was pursuing us. I corrected the Res-a-tesseract¡¯s orientation and poured on as much acceleration as possible.


    ¡°Two more missiles!¡± shouted X-Talia, putting up markers on my screen again. I flipped the ship around so we could fly backward, increasing our velocity while targeting the oncoming missiles. One missile down, two. Then there were two more coming at me, followed by another two. What universal law of launching missiles required ships to have two launchers? It didn¡¯t matter. These were not the complicated ones the stealth ship had shot at us, just dumb warheads with their primary advantage being that they kept coming. The other thing that kept coming: the gunboat. It was clear it had much better acceleration than we did.


    ¡°X-Talia, are we gonna make it to a point where we can jump?¡±


    ¡°No,¡± came X-Talia¡¯s response, clear, concise, and full of certainty. Well, shit.


    We weren¡¯t gonna be able to run. The only option was to fight, and fighting a ship that had a shield was one of those David and Goliath scenarios, except in that situation, David had a sling to keep his distance and hurl rocks at stupid amounts of acceleration while I had ripper cannons, which were supposed to be wonderful at chewing through ship¡¯s hulls and absolutely terrible at chewing through shields.


    A quick run through of all my options and I realigned the Res-a-tesseract to dive into the most asteroid-dense section of Azore¡¯s rings that we were close to. We¡¯d weave through the rocks backward while shooting missiles. Maybe the debris would confuse the gunboat¡¯s sensors long enough that we could make our escape. I took a brief look at Sam, mostly because she had been a little too quiet and I was afraid something might have happened. She held onto the armrest of her chair with her eyes squeezed shut and her lips moving as though she may be praying. I didn¡¯t believe in any gods, but I couldn¡¯t blame the girl for praying at a time like this.


    ¡°You keep calling out incoming missiles, keep me updated on damage reports, and update me on anything you think I might miss,¡± I told X-Talia. The two-dimensional avatar pressed her lips together in a grim line and gave me a nod. If I was gonna die, I was gonna try to take that bastard with me.


    Twenty-something minutes. That¡¯s how long the gunboat chased me through the asteroid field before it was close enough that I had to do something other than run. We were almost at the point where I was shooting at missiles within seconds of them being ejected. The thing seemed to have a never-ending supply of the damnable death tubes. However, the crew on board the gunship must have been hesitating with so many rocks around as they were being launched at a slower rate. I took my chance around a very large asteroid.


    ¡°Sam?¡±


    ¡°Yeah.¡±


    ¡°Hang on to your ass.¡±


    Sam gave a nervous squeak of acknowledgment as I delayed firing at the next two oncoming missiles, instead choosing to swing the Res-a-tesseract around the large asteroid, expecting the two death tubes to chase me down. Sweat was still trying to pour into my eyes, blurring my sight, a salty, stinging annoyance despite the considerably less oven-like conditions of the bridge. No atmosphere meant that all heat was being radiated instead of sent to us via convection. Still, I wished I could wipe my brow.


    I over-saturated the gravity emitters and launched the Res-a-tesseract around the asteroid. The plan had been to come around at roughly the same time the gunship was going around the other side. It was gonna be close as hell, but would give me plenty of time to shoot at it. I apparently didn¡¯t realize how close.


    As soon as I was around the asteroid, the ship was right there. I slammed all energy into the port side gravity emitter in a desperate attempt not to collide with the ship. The thing wasn¡¯t any bigger than the Res-a-tesseract, a bit sleeker, and the hull plating certainly looked thicker, but it wasn¡¯t designed to carry cargo. It did, however, have an extra power core and a shield emitter. The thing started firing on us as soon as we came around, and I did the same. Point defense cannons on turret mounts swiveled towards us, not requiring the ship itself to move. The space between us lit up with tracers. The Res-a-tesseract¡¯s rounds splattered ineffectually across the shields, causing the usually invisible energy to flash bright light. Sam screamed as another round flew through the bridge, this one from the floor and up out of the ceiling.


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    ¡°Lock damaged, main coolant link leak, damage to Rift Drive capacitor,¡± X-Talia said, listing the damages in a dry monotone.


    Then we were past the ship, and I launched our over-saturated heat sink directly at the fucker. The twin missiles, which somehow knew not to blow up their own origin point, suddenly veered down in a desperate bid to blow up the white-hot thing currently flying towards the gunship. The heat sink bounced off the gunship¡¯s shields, and the missiles bloomed into twin explosions, causing the whole side of the gunship to light up.


    ¡°It¡¯s breached!¡± X-Talia shouted, highlighting the area as a vibrant red weak point.


    For a moment, I poured on the power to the forward gravity emitter, attempting to slow our momentum in one direction and send us back towards the damaged gunship, all while keeping the projectiles flying at it. The gunship rotated, moving its weak point out of our line of sight and attempting to bring to bear its other turret-mounted point defense cannon. Being this close to an enemy vessel, specifically one with shields, I quickly noticed that the turrets sat outside the shield. I didn¡¯t know how shields worked, but it stood to reason that they functioned in both directions, which made that turret my new target. We were too close for that thing to launch missiles and not blow itself up.


    X-Talia started droning out damage reports as we flew into the line of fire. ¡°O2 tank rupture, water tank rupture, forward gravity emitter partially damaged, port gravity emitter offline, port chain gun offline,¡± X-Talia reported.


    She droned on. We got closer. Then the firing stopped. The turret turned to slag, opening a large hole in the shields for me to drive more fire into. At any type of reasonable ship-to-ship range, this would be impossible, but we weren¡¯t at reasonable ship-to-ship range. We were so damn close. I could practically reach out of the forward viewport and touch the thing. Figuratively speaking, that¡¯s what I did. I practically wedged the starboard chain gun into the hole and kept on firing. Large chunks of the shield went down as shield emitters were destroyed. The rounds that made their way in between the ship and the shield ricocheted back and forth, damaging the ship far more than the invisible energy barrier. Now, the Res-a-tesseract and the gunship were lodged together, the forward gravity emitter pulling both masses to a single point. I kept firing, sliding the Res-a-tesseract closer to the bridge. When I was there and it was free from shielding, I let go of the forward gravity pull, swung the back end up, and dumped as many rounds as possible into the gunship¡¯s bridge.


    The thing had probably stopped fighting a while ago. I found myself sweating in my soft suit, breathing heavily. Only 32 rounds left in my working chain-cannon. Trying to get my breathing and heart rate under control, I mentally ran down a checklist of what I needed to check on. By some miracle, the first thing that popped into my mind was Sam.


    ¡°Hey, Sam?¡± You still alive?"


    The expression on her face startled me at first. She had her teeth clenched together and bared; her face scrunched up tight like she was in massive pain. As she opened one eye and looked around, it seemed like she might have just been sitting there terrified. Honestly, terrified was probably a better reaction than I was having, at least a more logical reaction. I hadn¡¯t been scared. Concerned, yes. I fully didn¡¯t think I¡¯d still be breathing, but I hadn¡¯t been scared or terrified. Mostly just angry. The fuckers didn¡¯t even hail us. Hell, if they had played the whole system authority thing, they might have been able to get a lot closer before I¡­


    ¡°Uh, I think so.¡±


    ¡°Ok. So just hang on, alright?¡±


    She nodded through her helmet, and I returned my attention to the ship¡¯s consoles, at least the ones that were still working. There had been a lot of flickering going on, and I was extraordinarily surprised that things were still functional.


    ¡°X-Talia, you got an updated damage report.¡±


    The two-dimensional avatar existed on only one screen, and she gave a bit of a grimace before speaking.


    ¡°Um, well, the Power Core is working. It¡¯s been a little overtaxed, which causes more damage, something that has been building up. Gravity Drive is still functional by some miracle. We¡¯ve lost a few connections to various emitters. Amazingly, the systems cabinet didn¡¯t get hit and there¡¯s enough electronics that we still have power and gravity in many places. Yeah, that¡¯s about it.¡±


    ¡°So, it was easier to tell me what was working as opposed to what wasn¡¯t?¡±


    ¡°Yeah, pretty much. I¡¯m practically flying blind right now. Most of the ship¡¯s sensors are down, so if there¡¯s anybody coming, I can¡¯t see them.¡±


    ¡°What about the mining drones?¡±


    ¡°One made it through unscathed. I think the charging station¡¯s F-ed.¡±


    I nodded. ¡°Ok, we got things to do and probably not much time to do it. Sam, can you stay here? See if you can¡¯t poke around and get anything to work.¡±


    I stood up, starting to make my way back towards the Galley.


    ¡°Wh-where are you going?¡± Sam asked, with the slightest hint of panic.


    ¡°The gunboat was mostly shielded. It probably didn¡¯t take that much damage internally. I need to go see if they have environmental before we run out of O2.¡±


    ¡°Oh, shit,¡± she said, possibly sounding more panicked.


    ¡°Don¡¯t worry, we¡¯ll get through this.¡±


    That isn¡¯t what I was thinking, but I figured she would prefer something a bit more comforting than ¡°jeez, we¡¯re probably gonna die.¡±


    I made my way through the galley, which was a complete mess. A round had made its way through my chair, and now most of it lay crumpled in a corner, the rest of it scattered across the floor. I bent over and picked up the duffel bag I had the hard suit stashed in. I wouldn¡¯t be able to change into it until I found somewhere pressurized, but considering what I was planning, it might make a reasonable shield. The cargo bay certainly hadn¡¯t gone unscathed. The railing was twisted out at an odd angle, hovering over the open floor of the bay, and one step had been blasted through almost dead center. Collected ore lay scattered across the floor and the drone charging station sat split apart and sparking. It looked like a thin mist was emanating from the floor as whatever liquid was under the paneling boiled off and attempted in vain to fill the empty container that was the universe. Gravity was out in several sections, which made walking to the engineering feel like I was at some weird dystopian Fun Park. Engineering itself wasn¡¯t good to look at. Well, it had fewer holes than the cargo bay, which looked kind of like Swiss Cheese. The Rift Drive had taken a sideways round that tore through its bottom forward section and out the top rearmost part, scattering bits of debris literally everywhere. Like all other liquids, the coolant had mostly evaporated into the void, leaving only the thick residue of whatever suspended solids it had spread across the floor like it had been some old blood stain. The Core seemed fine, as did the Gravity Drive. Environmental had taken a hit or two and there was a nice clean hole through the spares closet. It took some prying to get the door open. I stashed what was left of the closet¡¯s contents into my duffel bag. With the spare patches and a torch taken, I about-faced and made my way back into the front of the cargo bay.


    The forward lock wasn¡¯t keeping space out or air in. The other vessel was visible through the holes in the metal plates, still practically within arm¡¯s reach.


    ¡°Ok, X-Talia, cut the gravity in the cargo bay, open the doors, and start piloting the working mining drone. I wanna use it to get a ride over to the other ship.¡±


    ¡°Are you serious? There¡¯s debris floating around and you¡¯re in a soft suit?¡±


    ¡°I checked the O2 indicator on the upper left of my HUD, ¡°and I got about 92 minutes of breathable atmosphere. How long did you want me to wait?¡±


    ¡°Fair enough.¡±


    I held onto the edge of the lock as the doors opened, one of which got stuck. I put my boot against the edge and pushed, but I couldn¡¯t get it further than about three-quarters of the way into its designated hole. It was good enough to get the mining drone out. The gravity cut off. One of the mining drones activated and slowly drifted its way over to me. I grabbed hold, positioned myself so that I wouldn¡¯t be in the way of its reaction control jets, and then it pulled me out into the void.


    It was almost easier to tell how many holes the Res-a-tesseract had from the outside. All the lights were still on and it lit up each scar and hole as if the ship was supposed to be some type of fancy lamp. While the other vessel didn¡¯t look much better at the fore section where I had dumped as much ammo as possible into the bridge, the gunboat¡¯s aft and midsections were pretty much pristine. I continued on my ride until I reached the jagged hole that had once been where the crew was operating the ship. Chunks of metal, plastic, glass, and people floated in the zero-G space in an intricate dance of tiny collisions, slow spins, and random trajectories. I pushed myself off the drone and through the twisted and slagged cavern that once was the bridge. The rear hatch didn¡¯t exactly open. When I pulled on the lever, a sizeable chunk of the wall came with the door. It didn¡¯t come all the way through, leaving a small jagged entrance, and I wasn¡¯t 100% sure I was gonna be able to fit through. Some careful cutting with a torch left me with something I might pass through without puncturing my soft suit.


    As horrific as the bridge had been, the small galley and rec room beyond seemed almost unscathed, beyond the wreckage next to the hatchway. I drifted through the room, gun in one hand, bag containing my hard suit in the other. Beyond the galley was a small berthing area, four bunks, and a small head. Beyond that was a lock. I plastered myself against the bulkhead and tried to throw the manual lever, an action made considerably harder in zero-G. The force of air pushed me back a bit, but once the gas had released, I wedged my fingers in between the seam and pull the damn thing open. Once inside, I looked at the lit touchscreen, pushed the close button, and watched as the door slid shut. Really glad Sam and X-Talia weren¡¯t watching that. Cycling the lock, I watched as my suit tracked the pressure and atmospheric mixture. It claimed it to be survivable, so I popped my helmet off and took a breath. The air inside was warm and smelled a bit like burning plastic, but it sure beat cold vacuum.


    Peering through the little glass window in the lock, I didn¡¯t see anybody on the other side. I took my time peeling myself out of the soft suit in zero-G and trying to thrust myself into the hard suit. It took an excruciatingly long amount of time and made me long for gravity to come back. I checked in when I got my helmet back on.


    ¡°How you doing Sam?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m ok. I guess,¡± came her strained voice, ¡°just cleaning up the galley.¡±


    I opened my mouth to tell her that was a pointless idea, but caught myself. She needed something that she could do instead of just sitting there waiting for me to save her. I reworked my words before speaking again. ¡°Yeah. Not a bad idea. Just be careful not to get a puncture. Ok.¡±


    ¡°Yeah. OK.¡±


    Great, with the check-in and social interaction passed, I returned my attention to the other side of the lock, pushed the button to open the door, and floated my way into engineering.


    This was clearly the aft of the ship. It appeared to house the environmental systems primarily and a small lift that likely went to the lower deck. On the left were a couple of consoles and a large locker. To the right was the lock. I floated over to check it and verify that it was in working condition. It appeared to be, but then I had a sudden realization that I couldn¡¯t have X-Talia guide the ship over and connect to it without first making sure the shield was down. I drifted over to a ladder, flipped myself upside down, and carefully pulled myself down via the railing while keeping my gun at the ready.


    Someone was in engineering, that someone had his leg looped around a hook, likely made specifically for keeping one¡¯s body in position while working in zero-G. He threw a few levers and all the lights went out. That startled me. I pushed myself back up, primarily because I didn¡¯t want him seeing the lights in my helmet and secondarily to swap out the armor-piercing rounds that were in my lead thrower with the more frangible ammunition used for on-ship duties. The guy was in a soft suit, so I didn¡¯t need that extra armor-piercing ability. The red-colored emergency lights came on a little later than expected, but it was only a moment or two before the overheads flickered back to life, drenching the ship in visible light. I poked my head down and saw the guy give a fist pump in triumph and pat the Power Core before stretching his body out and reaching for the Gravity Drive. It was a perfect shot. I think he noticed me the moment before I pulled the trigger. I swear, I could almost see his eyes go wide through his foggy helmet, but the round slammed home dead center in his chest, sending him backwards and spinning slightly. Blood formed a large undulating bubble that tried to hang on to his body via cohesion, but separated as he twitched. I shot him again.


    I carefully checked the rest of the room, but beyond mechanical equipment, I found no other signs of other people. Bringing my attention to the panel the mercenary had been reaching for. I found that the Gravity Drive said that it had completed its reset and was awaiting orders. It wasn¡¯t gonna be getting orders from the bridge. The systems cabinet was slag. I didn¡¯t want the ship going anywhere, so I unselected all systems that weren¡¯t deck plating from the galley to the aft. Within a few minutes, my feet pressed firmly against the floor and the corpse fell to the ground. A few steps to the ship had me staring at the secondary Core and a large machine housing with several access panels and consoles attached to it. That could only be the shield generator. Like the Rift generator, I¡¯d never even seen one before. I had no idea how it worked, but I was almost giddy with the idea that I now had one. The only question was how to turn it off. Like most things with easy-to-use consoles, it didn¡¯t take long to figure out.


    ¡°X-Talia. I think I got the shields down. Can you use EMF Drive to bring the ship around and connect to the lock?¡±


    ¡°The lock on the Res-a-tesseract is dysfunctional. It won¡¯t be a perfect seal.¡±


    ¡°Hm. I wanna take as much crap with us when we leave. Can I weld the Res-a-tesseract to this thing?¡±


    There was a brief pause before a hesitant response came back. ¡°Yeah, but you¡¯d have to weld on some extra support if you wanna move both ships at the same time using the Res-a-tesseract. Also, keep in mind that I don¡¯t really have a lot of sensors beyond a couple of cameras that are still working. We¡¯re definitely going to need bracing if we¡¯re gonna be pulling the whole thing in one big Franken ship.¡±


    ¡°We¡¯ll figure it out. Let¡¯s get connected to the locks and then Sam can have some mostly fresh air.¡±


    ¡°Ok.¡±


    I looked around the engineering bay of the gunboat. As far as I was concerned, it was my gunboat now. I just had to find a way to fix it up good enough to get it out of here so I could fix it up better. Hmm, then I was gonna need some supplies. At least I wouldn¡¯t be dying today.

 16: Refactor 1

    Thomas and Jacob had done their fair share of odd jobs. This one certainly wasn''t the oddest, but there was a part coming up that was going to be mechanically difficult. They had already dropped the mostly empty shipping container off at its designated coordinates and were currently moving to pick up two supposedly full crates drifting in the void. The goal was to get close to them without affecting them via the gravitational fields from their own ship. Then they were gonna have to vacate the atmosphere in the living compartment of the small freighter, open the lock, and somehow drift their ship using the Electromagnetic Field drive so that the lock engulfed the floating crate like some type of worm with an open maw consuming a large cube of, well, the metaphor was breaking down. Thinking about it logically, it really wasn''t any more difficult than a docking procedure. It just concerned them because they were well aware that one of these crates contained missiles. Missiles, of course, had a bunch of safety systems preventing them from detonating unless primed, but who''s to say that the mystery person on the other end of this trade hadn''t done such a thing?


    "There it is," Adam said as he gently turned the ship on its side so that its docking port faced the crate.


    "All right. I''ll start decompressing as soon as soon as the hatch is locked," said Jacob, who had already gotten the soft suit on. Jacob patted Adam''s seat and disappeared into the galley. The hatch locked behind him. He hit a few switches and started canning the atmosphere.


    "Quick comm check, you hear me, Adam?" came the voice over the bridge''s speakers.


    "Loud and clear," Adam responded.


    "Gravity down to 0.1 standard, atmosphere stored, tethered in, opening lock now," said Jacob.


    Adam waited with bated breath as he watched the indicator stating whether or not the locks were open. Once the screen showed both locks open he waited for Jacob''s next message.


    "Crate is visible 8 meters out, take it slow," came Jacob''s voice.


    Adam nudged the ship closer to the crate. A functioning lock would have sensors in it that allowed the ship''s computer to give orientation information. A crate had none of that. So despite the fact that he could see it on camera, he couldn''t line it up quite correctly without another person''s eyes on it.


    "Doing good. Keep it slow," came Jacob''s rather unconcerned voice.


    Adam kept his hands over the controls, waiting for any order Jacob might give him. The crate drifted out of sight, supposedly into the ship, but until he got the confirmation from Jacob, he wouldn''t know for sure.


    "Package received and secured. You can move to the next objective," Jacob said, his voice coming over the speakers.


    Adam looked at his sensors and tried to judge whether or not it was worth approaching the next crate using gravitational fields or if he should just take the time and float there using the EMF drive. One was shorter, the other caused fewer issues if he screwed something up.


    "How''s your O2?" Adam asked.


    "2.5 hours, going fine," Jacob said.


    With that, Adam figured he''d just use the EMF drive. It was a full 15 minutes before he was relatively lined up with the next crate.


    "Four meters out, move a meter backwards, please," Adam said.


    This one took a few more directions; up, down, backwards, forwards, but Jacob kept calm and therefore, so did Adam.


    "Both packages aboard, gravity back to standard, locks closed, atmosphere filling. You can take us out."


    Adam let out a breath and started moving forward using gravitational pull instead of the damn EMF drive. It would be a day and a half before they reached their destination for delivery of the crates, but first, they had to make sure that said crates contained what they were supposed to.


    Once they were situated far enough out of the rings that they weren''t likely to hit anything or be attacked by some unseen party, both men made their way into the back and started unlatching the crate. Inside were various electronic bits and what looked like a disassembled chain cannon, along with a handful of various computer parts and a ship''s transponder.


    Both Adam and Jacob looked at each other, then to the other crate, slowly moving over to it and carefully removing the lid. Sure enough, this one held the thing that made them nervous. Four well-packed missiles. Nothing seemed odd. No blinking lights, no odd sounds, no indication that anything was armed or ready to blow. Carefully, they returned the lid to its proper position and left the crates. Adam would acknowledge that their package was delivered and the packages they were supposed to receive had indeed been received. Then they''d get new orders on where to deliver each of the bits. All in all, it was a pretty simple job and as long as the Sentinel Mercenary Group didn''t start randomly harassing them, it would go off without a hitch.


    ***


    The one working mining drone had been sent out to the freight container with the hope that it would be able to retrieve the airtight hatch by itself. It would return it to the open engineering bay of the gunboat. My job was to cut a hole in the floor. A very precise hole. Underneath some of the paneling was a network of wires and tubes that had to be avoided. I was going off of X-Talia''s directions, and I wasn''t too worried, but this certainly would be the first time I''d ever actively tried to put a hole in the deck plating of a ship.


    Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    It took practically all day to get the correct size hole cut out. The new hatch slipped in, and after some welding and sealing it up with leak patches; I performed a bit of testing and I concluded that I had succeeded in my task. I was happy to get out of the hard suit, take a quick shower, and join Sam for dinner.


    The galley hadn''t needed any work other than patching the bulkhead that used to join with the bridge. The bridge itself was mostly gone, and the wall where the hatchway would have been now sported metal plates welded together and sealed over with leak patches. In many ways, the galley section of the cramped room was smaller, but the rec room section of it was larger. It was enough for four people to live and work, taking turns and shifts to keep an eye on the bridge. Presumably, it would have had a pilot, an auxiliary pilot, an engineer, and an auxiliary engineer. Those four would likely take turns doing the other ship duties like cooking and cleaning. Right now, that was me and Sam''s job. I focused on the engineering side of things, and she was doing the cooking and cleaning. Nobody was piloting this ship because, let''s face it, the bridge was slag at best.


    X-Talia currently resided in one of the server racks I had purchased so that we could expand her capability. Technically, she was the one flying the ship, though you couldn''t really call it flying as our maximum acceleration at the moment was a single G, less we tear the amalgamation of ship parts free from each other. In the time between the fight and the recent delivery, we had got the galley situated, made sure all the environmentals were working, messaged David Sullivan to make the exchange of weapons and a few other components for a few things we needed, and plastered chunks of the hull of the new vessel with working sensors from the two other vessels. Currently, we were flying the Starship Amalgamation. It wasn''t going very far. On a positive note, I currently was in possession of three power cores, two Grav-drives, and a handful of random parts that were going to be the basis for a new endeavor.


    Sam''s suggestion had been that we get it fixed up, then run off to a different system. I would have agreed, but there was one problem with that logic. The Rift Drive had been destroyed, and the mercenary group ran the gate used for vessels that didn''t have drives. We were stuck in this system, stuck in a system where both the pirates and mercenaries were working together and had decided they didn''t like us.


    "I feel useless," Sam said, a forkful of pasta halfway to her face.


    I looked up at her. "Useless?" I said. "Before you, I ate a bunch of garbage."


    She stared blankly at me for a moment before her lips twitched into a smile, and she gave a short laugh. "Yeah. Ok, but apart from cooking and cleaning, I don''t actually do anything."


    "I could walk you through the visual site inspections," X-Talia offered via the ship''s speakers.


    "That would take it off my plate," I said. "To be fair, I only do stuff when there''s a problem." The statement wasn''t exactly true. I still flew the ship when there wasn''t a problem, but on normal day-to-day operations, I ran VSI, did any minor maintenance issues, and played video games.


    Sam seemed to consider it for a moment.


    "Ah, yeah, I guess you''re right," she said.


    "And you''re here for serious problems. Like when I have a rock sticking out of my leg," I said, pointing my fork at her.


    "Yeah, but to be fair, don''t ever do that again," she replied.


    "Well, you don''t have to tell me twice."


    After dinner, Sam and I spent time watching a movie before hitting the rack. Hitting the rack, that was a new way for me to experience idioms. The bunks were very much rack-like. Sam and I slept across from each other, separated by a narrow walkway. It would be back to grinding and welding in the morning. Time was going by at a crawl and it was rather frustratingly as I slowly got the ship welded back together.


    With the new hatch installed, I was then able to weld ratchets to both the ship hull and that of the freight container, wedging the thing tight and welded it in place. With enough sealant and welding, we now had a new room attached to the ventral section of the ship. Actuators and a wirelessly activated lock mechanism were wired in, so X-Talia could open and close the freight container like a large cargo bay.


    We had sold some stuff for way too little so that we could get an order of stuff for way too much, but as the cargo container was attached, the drones were moved in, and a shiny new hodgepodge of wires, chairs, screens, and other gadgets got wired into the space available in the Rec room to function as a small bridge. The ship was coming along quite nicely.


    The Gunboat wasn''t gonna be winning any beauty contests. It was ugly inside and out, with only the galley keeping all its panels in place and lacking extra wires. Many of the components from the Res-a-tesseract had been stripped, and we''d be stripping even more when the plan hatched by X-Talia, Sam, and myself started shaping into fruition. The Res-a-tesseract had a working power core, Grav-drive, and enough systems in the bridge to fly the damn thing.


    With all the scrap metal we had, we were welding together a¡­ I hesitated to call it a ship. A small vessel with no environmentals that had a single ripper cannon, two detachable missiles, and could be controlled by X-Talia. Let''s call it a drone fighter. X-Talia had primarily been focused on the programming for it, creating decision trees so it reacted with some logic given its orders. Ideally, I would sit in a gunboat and remote control it. However, due to the vast distances in space, that wasn''t a viable option. Not only would there be lag from what I told it to do, there''s also lag from me seeing what was happening. The thing had to be dumb enough that it didn''t overcomplicate simple tasks, but smart enough that it could essentially execute given tasks on its own. It was taking most of X-Talia''s current processing power.


    Finally, we had a working ship. The shields didn''t cover the entire thing and it only had one working point defense cannon, but we still had several missiles. We detached the leftover carcass of the Res-a-tesseract and drifted off into the void to hunt pirates.


    "So what are we calling the ship?" X-Talia asked.


    "I''m going with Retribution," I said.


    "We need an actual registration number."


    "No, we don''t. We can''t get to a station anyway, and we shouldn''t be using a transponder."


    "Hmmm," was X-Talia''s only reply as we found a lone Free Light Mining Consortium barge and took up position far enough away where we didn''t seem to threaten it.


    "We''re being hailed."


    "Put it up please."


    "Unidentified vessel, please state your name and purpose."


    "This is the Retribution. Please don''t mind us. We''re just waiting for pirates to show," I said, hoping they wouldn''t go find a different mining spot.


    "I don''t really want pirates to think we''re plotting to take them out," came the concerned sounding response.


    "If they hail you, you can warn them that somebody''s using you as bait."


    I waited several minutes, but there was no reply and the mining barge didn''t leave its position, apparently deciding it was more profitable to continue working at its little honey pot instead of searching for a new one. That was fine with me. I sure hope this plan worked.

 17: Refactor 2

    "All right, ladies and gentlemen, same as usual. Load up the hauler. No one gets hurt."


    The voice transmission was picked up by a drone. One of the small ones that was cobbled together with leftover pieces of the two mining drones. The message was then relayed to the Retribution.


    "Yeah. Just a heads up. There''s a ship somewhere north of us who thinks they''re using us as bait for you."


    "They ratted us out just like that?" Sam asked with a tone more along the lines of disappointment than surprise.


    I shrugged. "They can''t be too ruthless. I assume they need to build up trust with their targets. ''You give us the goods, we don''t hurt you.'' That kind of whole shtick. Makes sense that the miners trust them more than us."


    I spent more time trying to figure out how our position had gotten defined as North. It took too damn long to realize it was based on Azore''s spin. The cardinal directions then plastered themselves in my mind: north, south, east, west, toward Azore and away from Azore.


    There was some not very useful chatter as the miners and pirates discussed our probable location and whether or not there was more than one of us. Five ships came into view, two of them, a large freight hauler of some sort and a smaller fighter, parked themselves next to the mining barges. The other three, two fighters and a gunboat of an extremely similar design to the Retribution, though considerably more whole, angled their way towards us.


    I took control of the Retribution and moved us a bit east and away from Azore. There was a specific asteroid I wanted these guys to pass, and the closer I could get them to it, the better this ambush was gonna work.


    "Unidentified vessel, what do you think you''re doing?"


    I looked up towards the console and over at Sam. "What are we doing? It''s not privateering. That''s just piracy for other nations. Pirate hunting? Pirating the pirates?"


    Sam shrugged. "I think technically it would be pirate hunting."


    "Hunting pirates. What are you guys doing?" I said over the comm, wondering what his expression to my answer might be. "X-Talia, you can activate the, uh, transponder?"


    It came out as more of a question because we weren''t actually using a transponder. We weren''t running an actual ship ID. We were just gonna squirt out a name connected to a number that was just a bunch of zeros. I wanted all eyes on the damaged, but shielded ship.


    "I think you''re in the wrong system for that," came the response nearly a minute later. Must have been due to hesitation because he wasn''t that far away. He was right, of course. We had literally no support. With the pirates and the mercenary security working together, Rixa indeed was the worst place to be a pirate hunter. It would be less bad if I had a working Rift Drive, but we didn''t. We were stuck here. Couldn''t go to any stations, and wouldn''t be left alone to mine. However, I was done with running. There was literally no place left to run. We were at the edge of human-controlled space, and we were as far as we could go without some type of very self-sufficient fleet.


    Random thought: Could we build a self-sufficient fleet?


    I thrust the ship into a forward dive, flying straight at the pirates. It must have been an odd sight. The whole front of the ship was unshielded and partially missing. There was a freight container welded to the ventral section. One side of the ship was missing most of its shields. The Retribution only had one working point defense cannon. We were falling at a comfortable four-G acceleration. We looked wounded. We were wounded. The pirates had to be too busy laughing to know what hit them.


    Two missiles launched from their gunboat. Two missiles launched from the Retribution. Two more missiles activated just as the ships passed one of the asteroids. One of them targeted the nearest fighter. The other targeted the gunship itself. Without the advantage of seeing them coming from a distance, both ships were unable to turn their point defense cannons on the incoming death tubes. One missile hit the fighter and took it out completely. The other missile smashed into the gunboat''s shields, causing a wave of light to play over the ship. It didn''t cause the shields to go down, but the ship rolled to put its suddenly weakened side in the other direction. The other fighter moved in front of the gunboat to picket the incoming missiles from the Retribution.


    I laughed. Two more missiles came out from the next asteroid. They were more ready for this. The gunboat managed to take out one of them before the other smashed into the other fighter. The fighter wasn''t completely out of commission, but the pilot had some serious problems. Plus, there were still the two missiles from the Retribution coming straight at him. That fighter went up in a blaze of vapor and parts. The gunboat started firing its point defense cannon at this last incoming missile, only to find a drone firing Ripper cannon shots into its turret. The Retribution''s second missile never made it to the gunboat, but by then, the drone was on the gunboat''s turret, hovering only about five or six meters away from the vessel as it poured rounds into the ship''s weak point. The gunboat tried to turn, but the little drone with oversized power core and gravity emitters merely rotated along with it, continuing to pour rounds into the ever growing hole. I took my concentration off long enough to vaporize the two incoming missiles with my own point defense cannon. An easy job when nothing else was shooting at you. And then the gunboat stopped moving.


    "Ok, guys," I said, directing the message towards the hauler and its single fighter escort. "Let the miners take their cargo back. Vent your atmosphere on the hauler, turn off the gravity, and power down all ship systems. Whoever is on the hauler can get in that little fighter and you can leave. Or you could try to run. I''ve got plenty of missiles left and we didn''t take any damage." I sat back in my chair and waited.


    "Can we take the soft suit off now?" Sam asked.


    "X-Talia, why do you think that gunboat stopped moving?"


    "Extrapolating from the drone''s firing angle, I guess the systems cabinet was separated from the rest of the ship, either directly damaged or possibly the wiring."


    "So they could still technically get some things fixed, start flying around, and firing at us?"


    "Yes."


    "The fighter is docking with the hauler," Sam noted, bringing my eyes to another screen.


    Were they actually listening to me? "I feel like this went too well. What''s the bigger prize?"


    "The gunboat," Sam said. "More missiles, shield points, and all that stuff."


    "I agree with Sam," X-Talia said.


    "Hmmm," I stared at the drifting gunboat on the screen. Sam was right. It was the bigger prize. The shield generator alone was worth it, let alone two power cores, but how to collect? "X-Talia, can you bring our fighter drone up to the front of that thing? See if we can get a good look inside the bridge viewport."


    "One moment."


    It didn''t take long. The drone had been following at zero relative speed right alongside the gunboat. It merely moved up forward and turned itself so its main camera could look directly into the bridge. The people inside still had power. Two guys were frantically working on the systems cabinet. They had gravity, but were probably in vacuum at the moment.


    "Well, I guess let''s try comm-ing them.¡±


    "Attention, pirate gunboat. If you will look outside your forward viewport, you will see down the barrel of one of my automated guns." I waited to see if anybody in the bridge would turn and try to look out the viewport. They did. Supposedly, they had lost control of the mechanisms in the aft end of the ship. Theoretically, the engineer could manually fly the thing. They still had almost all their shields, so they were like a big floating turtle, a hard shell with a few weak points. All the valuable innards would get damaged if we decided to do the same thing we had done to the Retribution, which I was sorely tempted to do.


    "Hello. I know you can hear me. You''ve got a choice. You either surrender and we''ll see if we can get one of the miners to take you back to a station with them, or I start opening your tin can. What''s it gonna be?" Both men on the bridge stopped what they were doing and stared back out the viewport. I imagined them arguing whether or not I could make good on my threat. I could. We could stick that drone back in the little hole where the turret had been and rip its way through into the bridge, turning the gunboat into something that resembled the Retribution a little more closely.


    "It looks like they might have listened with the hauler," said X-Talia.


    "Can we send our little relay drone down there to see if it worked?" Sam suggested.


    "Sure."


    This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    "You have two minutes before I start firing again," I said to the guys trying to get their ship fixed enough to keep in the fight. The turrets were certainly a weak point. In open space, it likely didn''t matter quite as much, but in the asteroid field that was the ring around the gas giant, the ability to lay ambushes certainly changed the dynamics. The ability to cut the cord from the systems cabinet to the actual systems they reached out to was another weak point. The guys on the screen started working more frantically. One guy disappeared through the hatch, leaving only one on the bridge. They weren''t surrendering; they were gonna go down fighting.


    "X-Talia, just start chewing away at the front."


    She gave me a nod, and then the drone left the front viewport, stuck its gun barrel into the hole in the shields, and started firing towards the fore. It was considerably more precise than I had been when we took the ship we were currently on, and it wasn''t long before the drone had opened up the front and could point the barrel of its gun back down the viewport and pick off the squishy targets inside.


    "FUCK!" I yelled as the gunboat launched two missiles. Both screamed forward, alternating their trajectory just slightly so that they collided with the drone in front of the ship. That move may have been suicidal with the shields up, but without shields, there was no coming back from it. Twin explosions obliterated the cobbled-together parts of the Res-a-tesseract as well as the bridge of the gunboat. A moment later, a secondary explosion erupted as the drone''s oversized power core suffered a catastrophic meltdown. I held my breath, waiting to see if the gunboat would go off, either its cores or its missile batteries taking the rest of the ship with it. The thing gently floated backward, a lifeless husk. If there was anyone still on board, they were far more worried about their levels of O2 than trying to get the ship to move.


    I grit my teeth and returned my focus to the other ship that we may or may not still have. " What about the hauler?"


    Sam was watching over a screen that showed our little relay drone flying through the empty freight bays of the hauler. "So far so good," said Sam. "The locks aren''t open, so I can''t tell if they''ve actually followed orders."


    "X-Talia, can you send our mining drone over there and we can cut into it?"


    X-Talia gave a nod of her head before reporting that the mining drone had been launched. It would take a few minutes for it to get close. I monitored the telemetry of our now derelict pirate vessel and brought the Retribution closer to the cargo hauler. I didn''t want to get too close. There were still about eight mining vessels that didn''t trust us, and who knew whether or not the hauler had been rigged to blow.


    It was a long and nerve-wracking process to have the mining drone cut its way through the lock and send in the relay drone. As asked, they had turned off the gravity and canned the air. This meant the relay drone could fly through the ship and check for any surprises. We didn''t find any. That pirate fighter was out there watching us, likely having called for backup. That would probably be coming around in the next few hours.


    "What do you need in order to take control?" I asked X-Talia.


    "I need to be plugged into the systems like you did to the Res-a-tesseract."


    "Can we have a drone do it?"


    X-Talia shook her head. "We don''t have anything with the arms needed."


    "So I guess I''m going on a spacewalk."


    "Be careful," Sam said as I vacated my seat. She slipped into mine, taking control of the Retribution.


    "Line us up close to the lock," I said, fiddling with the device I was going to have to plug into the systems closet in the possibly hostile vessel.


    The short trip was creepy and nerve-wracking. The desolate ship was dead quiet without atmosphere, and I kept waiting for something to explode or shoot me or something, but nothing actually happened. I drifted into the living and working corridors that reminded me a lot of the flying brick, popping up the systems cabinet and plugging in the device so X-Talia could take some type of control over the vessel. It didn''t take long. Oddly enough, she couldn''t copy her base code, so we were going to have to fly pretty close in order for her to remote control the hauler. That was fine by me.


    We headed back to the chunk of gunboat, and once that was welded to the hull, we''d be trying to skedaddle. With our modified mining drone, I didn''t even need to be outside to do the welding. It was a nerve-wracking two days as we gathered our prizes and flew off deeper into the asteroid fields, changing course several times to throw off any would-be pursuers, all while taking stock of our ill-gotten gains.


    Losing the little fighter drone hurt. The thing had functioned amazingly. Its overpowered Core and gravity emitters made it quick. Its lack of internal environmental area made it small. The thing had worked almost flawlessly. Having another gunboat would have been great for spare parts as well as everything we could pull out and sell. Unfortunately, the front half of it had been blown away. By some miracle, the shield generator had survived along with both power cores, though the one connected to the shield had suffered some damage. Its gravity drive had come out unscathed as well.


    We had a choice. We could cobble together another drone, this one with a shield, or we could sell the shield generator and get other supplies. We needed to figure out a way to capture the smaller fighters. They would be a lot easier to convert to drones. In the end, I decided to set some time aside to talk with Sam and X-Talia about our future plans. We needed a full set of blueprints and a road map to get there. For now, we should probably celebrate our success. Quite honestly, quite probably our first success.


    Six more weeks, two more ships. The two ships were fighters, well, I mean fighters in the same way that I mean gunboat or cargo ship, that is to say that they were small and they had guns. The first one was a converted shuttle. It had twin chain ripper cannons, and much like our cute little attack drone, it also had two exterior-mounted missiles. We managed to take that one out by surprise¡ªchain cannon to the face of the guy flying it¡ªwhich literally meant that we had a shuttle with minimum damage and almost all the working parts.


    The second one was a modified freight hauler much like the Flying Brick minus the freight container and with a jumped-up gravity drive and a rail gun. This one also carried four missiles. Unfortunately, because we had to fight them both at the same time, the one with the rail gun ended up taking a missile to the rear, overloading its power core and taking out the aft end of the ship along with the gravity drive. Bad luck for us, but it was another one of those things where we came out unscathed.


    Fun fact, the Gravity Drive did not create gravity. The machine was essentially a complicated power distributor. I''m not sure why I never realized this before. Obviously, you can''t send gravity through electrical conduit. The actual gravitational effect was produced by the emitters, whether that be the internal dampening systems, the main gravity emitters that pulled the ship in various directions, or the gravity decking, which produced the ability to stand up in the middle of space. Either way, the fact that I have spent my whole life in space and not realized that the Gravity Drive did not produce actual gravity was one of those mind-exploding moments.


    We had taken enough shield emitters off the derelict gunship to fully recoat the Retribution. Its face still looked terribly deformed, but it was now behind a set of shields. We also managed to replace the slagged point defense cannon with the good one from the derelict. In the end, we sold the shield generator. It was the thing with the highest price on it. There wasn''t a lot we could do about it. What we got in return was almost worth it: a mini foundry.


    The mini foundry was one of those things that didn''t really make a lot of sense if it wasn''t a very long trip to the nearest orbital foundry. It was slow, took a lot of energy, and produced a lot of waste heat. Not the kind of thing that the average person wants on their ship. It basically required its own power core, which we had, and it just didn''t function up to par with the orbital foundries. It was one of those machines that was great when you didn¡¯t have support. Like when you''re bootstrapping up in a new system or unable to simply fly into port. If only we had a very large ship with a lot of space on board that we could throw in a few additional servers and have a bunch of drones run said foundry and simply just tack on some extra radiators. Oh wait, we did. The hauler was quickly turning into the mobile base of operations, but we weren''t exactly mining asteroids. We had all this refined material that could be collected, cut into smaller pieces, and fed into the mini foundry which would spit out metal stock for any number of machines.


    Next on the list was an extruder so we could turn that stock into structural supports, then maybe some type of laser cutting machine so we could turn plates into various panels for things. If we could keep up with the way things were going, we''d be six months out from having our own little mini drone factory. The problem with that is it all required specific components that we weren''t going to be able to build: computer chips, cameras, lenses, lasers, data arrays, all that stuff.


    In time, we could theoretically be self-sufficient, but that was a tall order. What we needed was to be able to form the structural components of most of our drones and stuff, and trade high-end equipment like power cores and shield generators for all the little minutiae like batteries, cabling, and processors. Oddly enough, things were going quite well. I''m sure David Sullivan was still making out like a bandit being my only point of contact. But we were also considering maybe making a small mining drone ship that would release a few drones, do some mining, and then transport that automatically to the Free Light Consortium orbital foundries. We didn''t know what it was gonna take to get it registered legally so it wouldn''t be tagged as connected to us by the mercenaries or the pirates, but that was a project certainly on the drawing table. Everything was going just fine until we got a message.


    "GRANT!" X-Talia seemed to scream over the intercom.


    I woke with a start, Samantha pulling her head off my chest and looking around the dimly lit ship.


    "What?" I slurred, my mind still hazy. Not certain if X-Talia''s voice had come in my head or the real world.


    "Incoming message," X-Talia said.


    I rolled out of bed and stumbled across the few steps into the rec room, which now housed the ship''s control systems.


    "How many?" I asked in a panic.


    "One," X-Talia replied, her voice sounding slightly confused. She was having a hard time of it these days. The Res-a-tesseract had been wired with a butt load of cameras. In this new ship, she could only see me in a few select places.


    I grabbed hold of my hardsuit and started trying to pull on the legs.


    "What are you doing?"


    I looked down at my leg shoved through one leg of the hardsuit and realized this was stupid. The incoming missile would be here long before I got the damn hardsuit on. I flopped into the chair and pulled up the gun systems. "Where is it?"


    "The message?" X-Talia asked, sounding even more confused.


    "Message?" Sam stumbled in behind me in a black tank top and panties.


    "Yes, I said incoming message."


    I slumped into my chair. ¡°I thought you said incoming missiles.¡±


    "Oh." The two-dimensional image of X-Talia popped up on one of my screens, covering her mouth, giggling at me.


    "Just play the message."


    "Sure."


    There was a moment of delay before an oddly accented voice came over the speakers. It was female and sounded considerably less concerned despite the circumstances the person was reporting.


    "Mayday, mayday, this is Zoia of the Black Adder. My ship has been disabled by fire from pirates. I have two hours of oxygen and don''t think I''m going to be getting life support up and running before I''m out. Is anybody out there listening? Please respond. Be warned, the other pirate is probably disabled, but might get their ship online faster. Mayday, mayday, mayday, is anybody out there?"


    I slowly turned my head to Sam, mouth agape. She had a similar expression. "Well, shit."

 18: Refactor 3

    Author''s Notes: I''ve passed the 70K word mark and have realized that the story hasn''t really progressed the way I wanted. Keeping it as a game might have been the better option. The ship building isn''t following the Starfinder ruleset in any way shape or form. However I don''t hate the story so it won''t suddenly die like ''Shademire Company'' did. I''m gearing up for the end. A little disappointed that Zoia is only showing up now. The original character list was Grant, Sam, and Zoia.


    "Mayday, mayday, this is Zoia of the Black Adder. My ship has been disabled by fire from pirates. I have two hours of oxygen and don''t think I''m going to be getting life support up and running before I''m out. Is anybody out there listening? Please respond. Be warned, the other pirate is probably disabled, but might get their ship online faster. Mayday, mayday, mayday, is anybody out there?"


    "All right, ladies and gentlemen, same as usual. Load up the hauler. No one gets hurt."


    The voice transmission was picked up by a drone. One of the small ones that was cobbled together with leftover pieces of the two mining drones. The message was then relayed to the Retribution.


    "Yeah. Just a heads up. There''s a ship somewhere north of us who thinks they''re using us as bait for you."


    "They ratted us out just like that?" Sam asked with a tone more along the lines of disappointment than surprise.


    I shrugged. "They can''t be too ruthless. I assume they need to build up trust with their targets. ''You give us the goods, we don''t hurt you.'' That kind of whole shtick. Makes sense that the miners trust them more than us."


    I spent more time trying to figure out how our position had gotten defined as North. It took too damn long to realize it was based on Azore''s spin. The cardinal directions then plastered themselves in my mind: north, south, east, west, toward Azore and away from Azore.


    There was some not very useful chatter as the miners and pirates discussed our probable location and whether or not there was more than one of us. Five ships came into view, two of them, a large freight hauler of some sort and a smaller fighter, parked themselves next to the mining barges. The other three, two fighters and a gunboat of an extremely similar design to the Retribution, though considerably more whole, angled their way towards us.


    I took control of the Retribution and moved us a bit east and away from Azore. There was a specific asteroid I wanted these guys to pass, and the closer I could get them to it, the better this ambush was gonna work.


    "Unidentified vessel, what do you think you''re doing?"


    I looked up towards the console and over at Sam. "What are we doing? It''s not privateering. That''s just piracy for other nations. Pirate hunting? Pirating the pirates?"


    Sam shrugged. "I think technically it would be pirate hunting."


    "Hunting pirates. What are you guys doing?" I said over the comm, wondering what his expression to my answer might be. "X-Talia, you can activate the, uh, transponder?"


    It came out as more of a question because we weren''t actually using a transponder. We weren''t running an actual ship ID. We were just gonna squirt out a name connected to a number that was just a bunch of zeros. I wanted all eyes on the damaged, but shielded ship.


    "I think you''re in the wrong system for that," came the response nearly a minute later. Must have been due to hesitation because he wasn''t that far away. He was right, of course. We had literally no support. With the pirates and the mercenary security working together, Rixa indeed was the worst place to be a pirate hunter. It would be less bad if I had a working Rift Drive, but we didn''t. We were stuck here. Couldn''t go to any stations, and wouldn''t be left alone to mine. However, I was done with running. There was literally no place left to run. We were at the edge of human-controlled space, and we were as far as we could go without some type of very self-sufficient fleet.


    Random thought: Could we build a self-sufficient fleet?


    I thrust the ship into a forward dive, flying straight at the pirates. It must have been an odd sight. The whole front of the ship was unshielded and partially missing. There was a freight container welded to the ventral section. One side of the ship was missing most of its shields. The Retribution only had one working point defense cannon. We were falling at a comfortable four-G acceleration. We looked wounded. We were wounded. The pirates had to be too busy laughing to know what hit them.


    Two missiles launched from their gunboat. Two missiles launched from the Retribution. Two more missiles activated just as the ships passed one of the asteroids. One of them targeted the nearest fighter. The other targeted the gunship itself. Without the advantage of seeing them coming from a distance, both ships were unable to turn their point defense cannons on the incoming death tubes. One missile hit the fighter and took it out completely. The other missile smashed into the gunboat''s shields, causing a wave of light to play over the ship. It didn''t cause the shields to go down, but the ship rolled to put its suddenly weakened side in the other direction. The other fighter moved in front of the gunboat to picket the incoming missiles from the Retribution.


    I laughed. Two more missiles came out from the next asteroid. They were more ready for this. The gunboat managed to take out one of them before the other smashed into the other fighter. The fighter wasn''t completely out of commission, but the pilot had some serious problems. Plus, there were still the two missiles from the Retribution coming straight at him. That fighter went up in a blaze of vapor and parts. The gunboat started firing its point defense cannon at this last incoming missile, only to find a drone firing Ripper cannon shots into its turret. The Retribution''s second missile never made it to the gunboat, but by then, the drone was on the gunboat''s turret, hovering only about five or six meters away from the vessel as it poured rounds into the ship''s weak point. The gunboat tried to turn, but the little drone with oversized power core and gravity emitters merely rotated along with it, continuing to pour rounds into the ever growing hole. I took my concentration off long enough to vaporize the two incoming missiles with my own point defense cannon. An easy job when nothing else was shooting at you. And then the gunboat stopped moving.


    "Ok, guys," I said, directing the message towards the hauler and its single fighter escort. "Let the miners take their cargo back. Vent your atmosphere on the hauler, turn off the gravity, and power down all ship systems. Whoever is on the hauler can get in that little fighter and you can leave. Or you could try to run. I''ve got plenty of missiles left and we didn''t take any damage." I sat back in my chair and waited.


    "Can we take the soft suit off now?" Sam asked.


    "X-Talia, why do you think that gunboat stopped moving?"


    "Extrapolating from the drone''s firing angle, I guess the systems cabinet was separated from the rest of the ship, either directly damaged or possibly the wiring."


    "So they could still technically get some things fixed, start flying around, and firing at us?"


    "Yes."


    "The fighter is docking with the hauler," Sam noted, bringing my eyes to another screen.


    Were they actually listening to me? "I feel like this went too well. What''s the bigger prize?"


    "The gunboat," Sam said. "More missiles, shield points, and all that stuff."


    "I agree with Sam," X-Talia said.


    "Hmmm," I stared at the drifting gunboat on the screen. Sam was right. It was the bigger prize. The shield generator alone was worth it, let alone two power cores, but how to collect? "X-Talia, can you bring our fighter drone up to the front of that thing? See if we can get a good look inside the bridge viewport."


    "One moment."


    It didn''t take long. The drone had been following at zero relative speed right alongside the gunboat. It merely moved up forward and turned itself so its main camera could look directly into the bridge. The people inside still had power. Two guys were frantically working on the systems cabinet. They had gravity, but were probably in vacuum at the moment.


    "Well, I guess let''s try comm-ing them.¡±


    "Attention, pirate gunboat. If you will look outside your forward viewport, you will see down the barrel of one of my automated guns." I waited to see if anybody in the bridge would turn and try to look out the viewport. They did. Supposedly, they had lost control of the mechanisms in the aft end of the ship. Theoretically, the engineer could manually fly the thing. They still had almost all their shields, so they were like a big floating turtle, a hard shell with a few weak points. All the valuable innards would get damaged if we decided to do the same thing we had done to the Retribution, which I was sorely tempted to do.


    "Hello. I know you can hear me. You''ve got a choice. You either surrender and we''ll see if we can get one of the miners to take you back to a station with them, or I start opening your tin can. What''s it gonna be?" Both men on the bridge stopped what they were doing and stared back out the viewport. I imagined them arguing whether or not I could make good on my threat. I could. We could stick that drone back in the little hole where the turret had been and rip its way through into the bridge, turning the gunboat into something that resembled the Retribution a little more closely.


    "It looks like they might have listened with the hauler," said X-Talia.


    "Can we send our little relay drone down there to see if it worked?" Sam suggested.


    "Sure."


    "You have two minutes before I start firing again," I said to the guys trying to get their ship fixed enough to keep in the fight. The turrets were certainly a weak point. In open space, it likely didn''t matter quite as much, but in the asteroid field that was the ring around the gas giant, the ability to lay ambushes certainly changed the dynamics. The ability to cut the cord from the systems cabinet to the actual systems they reached out to was another weak point. The guys on the screen started working more frantically. One guy disappeared through the hatch, leaving only one on the bridge. They weren''t surrendering; they were gonna go down fighting.


    "X-Talia, just start chewing away at the front."


    She gave me a nod, and then the drone left the front viewport, stuck its gun barrel into the hole in the shields, and started firing towards the fore. It was considerably more precise than I had been when we took the ship we were currently on, and it wasn''t long before the drone had opened up the front and could point the barrel of its gun back down the viewport and pick off the squishy targets inside.


    "FUCK!" I yelled as the gunboat launched two missiles. Both screamed forward, alternating their trajectory just slightly so that they collided with the drone in front of the ship. That move may have been suicidal with the shields up, but without shields, there was no coming back from it. Twin explosions obliterated the cobbled-together parts of the Res-a-tesseract as well as the bridge of the gunboat. A moment later, a secondary explosion erupted as the drone''s oversized power core suffered a catastrophic meltdown. I held my breath, waiting to see if the gunboat would go off, either its cores or its missile batteries taking the rest of the ship with it. The thing gently floated backward, a lifeless husk. If there was anyone still on board, they were far more worried about their levels of O2 than trying to get the ship to move.


    I grit my teeth and returned my focus to the other ship that we may or may not still have. " What about the hauler?"


    Sam was watching over a screen that showed our little relay drone flying through the empty freight bays of the hauler. "So far so good," said Sam. "The locks aren''t open, so I can''t tell if they''ve actually followed orders."


    "X-Talia, can you send our mining drone over there and we can cut into it?"


    X-Talia gave a nod of her head before reporting that the mining drone had been launched. It would take a few minutes for it to get close. I monitored the telemetry of our now derelict pirate vessel and brought the Retribution closer to the cargo hauler. I didn''t want to get too close. There were still about eight mining vessels that didn''t trust us, and who knew whether or not the hauler had been rigged to blow.


    It was a long and nerve-wracking process to have the mining drone cut its way through the lock and send in the relay drone. As asked, they had turned off the gravity and canned the air. This meant the relay drone could fly through the ship and check for any surprises. We didn''t find any. That pirate fighter was out there watching us, likely having called for backup. That would probably be coming around in the next few hours.


    "What do you need in order to take control?" I asked X-Talia.


    "I need to be plugged into the systems like you did to the Res-a-tesseract."


    "Can we have a drone do it?"


    X-Talia shook her head. "We don''t have anything with the arms needed."


    "So I guess I''m going on a spacewalk."


    "Be careful," Sam said as I vacated my seat. She slipped into mine, taking control of the Retribution.


    "Line us up close to the lock," I said, fiddling with the device I was going to have to plug into the systems closet in the possibly hostile vessel.


    The short trip was creepy and nerve-wracking. The desolate ship was dead quiet without atmosphere, and I kept waiting for something to explode or shoot me or something, but nothing actually happened. I drifted into the living and working corridors that reminded me a lot of the flying brick, popping up the systems cabinet and plugging in the device so X-Talia could take some type of control over the vessel. It didn''t take long. Oddly enough, she couldn''t copy her base code, so we were going to have to fly pretty close in order for her to remote control the hauler. That was fine by me.


    We headed back to the chunk of gunboat, and once that was welded to the hull, we''d be trying to skedaddle. With our modified mining drone, I didn''t even need to be outside to do the welding. It was a nerve-wracking two days as we gathered our prizes and flew off deeper into the asteroid fields, changing course several times to throw off any would-be pursuers, all while taking stock of our ill-gotten gains.


    Losing the little fighter drone hurt. The thing had functioned amazingly. Its overpowered Core and gravity emitters made it quick. Its lack of internal environmental area made it small. The thing had worked almost flawlessly. Having another gunboat would have been great for spare parts as well as everything we could pull out and sell. Unfortunately, the front half of it had been blown away. By some miracle, the shield generator had survived along with both power cores, though the one connected to the shield had suffered some damage. Its gravity drive had come out unscathed as well.


    We had a choice. We could cobble together another drone, this one with a shield, or we could sell the shield generator and get other supplies. We needed to figure out a way to capture the smaller fighters. They would be a lot easier to convert to drones. In the end, I decided to set some time aside to talk with Sam and X-Talia about our future plans. We needed a full set of blueprints and a road map to get there. For now, we should probably celebrate our success. Quite honestly, quite probably our first success.


    Six more weeks, two more ships. The two ships were fighters, well, I mean fighters in the same way that I mean gunboat or cargo ship, that is to say that they were small and they had guns. The first one was a converted shuttle. It had twin chain ripper cannons, and much like our cute little attack drone, it also had two exterior-mounted missiles. We managed to take that one out by surprise¡ªchain cannon to the face of the guy flying it¡ªwhich literally meant that we had a shuttle with minimum damage and almost all the working parts.


    The second one was a modified freight hauler much like the Flying Brick minus the freight container and with a jumped-up gravity drive and a rail gun. This one also carried four missiles. Unfortunately, because we had to fight them both at the same time, the one with the rail gun ended up taking a missile to the rear, overloading its power core and taking out the aft end of the ship along with the gravity drive. Bad luck for us, but it was another one of those things where we came out unscathed.


    Fun fact, the Gravity Drive did not create gravity. The machine was essentially a complicated power distributor. I''m not sure why I never realized this before. Obviously, you can''t send gravity through electrical conduit. The actual gravitational effect was produced by the emitters, whether that be the internal dampening systems, the main gravity emitters that pulled the ship in various directions, or the gravity decking, which produced the ability to stand up in the middle of space. Either way, the fact that I have spent my whole life in space and not realized that the Gravity Drive did not produce actual gravity was one of those mind-exploding moments.


    We had taken enough shield emitters off the derelict gunship to fully recoat the Retribution. Its face still looked terribly deformed, but it was now behind a set of shields. We also managed to replace the slagged point defense cannon with the good one from the derelict. In the end, we sold the shield generator. It was the thing with the highest price on it. There wasn''t a lot we could do about it. What we got in return was almost worth it: a mini foundry.


    The mini foundry was one of those things that didn''t really make a lot of sense if it wasn''t a very long trip to the nearest orbital foundry. It was slow, took a lot of energy, and produced a lot of waste heat. Not the kind of thing that the average person wants on their ship. It basically required its own power core, which we had, and it just didn''t function up to par with the orbital foundries. It was one of those machines that was great when you didn¡¯t have support. Like when you''re bootstrapping up in a new system or unable to simply fly into port. If only we had a very large ship with a lot of space on board that we could throw in a few additional servers and have a bunch of drones run said foundry and simply just tack on some extra radiators. Oh wait, we did. The hauler was quickly turning into the mobile base of operations, but we weren''t exactly mining asteroids. We had all this refined material that could be collected, cut into smaller pieces, and fed into the mini foundry which would spit out metal stock for any number of machines.


    Next on the list was an extruder so we could turn that stock into structural supports, then maybe some type of laser cutting machine so we could turn plates into various panels for things. If we could keep up with the way things were going, we''d be six months out from having our own little mini drone factory. The problem with that is it all required specific components that we weren''t going to be able to build: computer chips, cameras, lenses, lasers, data arrays, all that stuff.


    In time, we could theoretically be self-sufficient, but that was a tall order. What we needed was to be able to form the structural components of most of our drones and stuff, and trade high-end equipment like power cores and shield generators for all the little minutiae like batteries, cabling, and processors. Oddly enough, things were going quite well. I''m sure David Sullivan was still making out like a bandit being my only point of contact. But we were also considering maybe making a small mining drone ship that would release a few drones, do some mining, and then transport that automatically to the Free Light Consortium orbital foundries. We didn''t know what it was gonna take to get it registered legally so it wouldn''t be tagged as connected to us by the mercenaries or the pirates, but that was a project certainly on the drawing table. Everything was going just fine until we got a message.


    "GRANT!" X-Talia seemed to scream over the intercom.


    I woke with a start, Samantha pulling her head off my chest and looking around the dimly lit ship.


    "What?" I slurred, my mind still hazy. Not certain if X-Talia''s voice had come in my head or the real world.


    "Incoming message," X-Talia said.


    I rolled out of bed and stumbled across the few steps into the rec room, which now housed the ship''s control systems.


    "How many?" I asked in a panic.


    "One," X-Talia replied, her voice sounding slightly confused. She was having a hard time of it these days. The Res-a-tesseract had been wired with a butt load of cameras. In this new ship, she could only see me in a few select places.


    I grabbed hold of my hardsuit and started trying to pull on the legs.


    "What are you doing?"


    I looked down at my leg shoved through one leg of the hardsuit and realized this was stupid. The incoming missile would be here long before I got the damn hardsuit on. I flopped into the chair and pulled up the gun systems. "Where is it?"


    "The message?" X-Talia asked, sounding even more confused.


    "Message?" Sam stumbled in behind me in a black tank top and panties.


    "Yes, I said incoming message."


    I slumped into my chair. ¡°I thought you said incoming missiles.¡±


    "Oh." The two-dimensional image of X-Talia popped up on one of my screens, covering her mouth, giggling at me.


    Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    "Just play the message."


    "Sure."


    There was a moment of delay before an oddly accented voice came over the speakers. It was female and sounded considerably less concerned despite the circumstances the person was reporting.


    "Mayday, mayday, this is Zoia of the Black Adder. My ship has been disabled by fire from pirates. I have two hours of oxygen and don''t think I''m going to be getting life support up and running before I''m out. Is anybody out there listening? Please respond. Be warned, the other pirate is probably disabled, but might get their ship online faster. Mayday, mayday, mayday, is anybody out there?"


    I slowly turned my head to Sam, mouth agape. She had a similar expression. "Well, shit."


    18: Refactor 3


    "Mayday, mayday, this is Zoia of the Black Adder. My ship has been disabled by fire from pirates. I have two hours of oxygen and don''t think I''m going to be getting life support up and running before I''m out. Is anybody out there listening? Please respond. Be warned, the other pirate is probably disabled, but might get their ship online faster. Mayday, mayday, mayday, is anybody out there?"


    One new line demon, repeat the previous recording that is Mayday, Mayday, Mayday.


    I finished playing the recording for the third time and turned my head towards Sam. "What do we do?"


    Sam looked at me as though she was offended. "We go get her!" she said rather forcefully, not quite a yell, but close to it.


    I put the Retribution in motion using the attached coordinates that came along with the message. "You sure?"


    Sam crossed her arms and looked at me like I wasn''t the one thinking this through. "Of course, I''m sure. You''re just gonna let somebody die?" I kept silent for a little too long. I''m sure I looked like I was being quiet and broody, but there were some things I didn''t think Sam was calculating correctly. "What?" she asked. "Are you really so cold as to leave somebody out there and suffocate?"


    "What kind of ship do you think the Black Adder is?" I asked, looking up at her and waiting for her to think that one through.


    Her hard expression softened slightly, the tension in her crossed arms decreasing a bit.


    "I don''t know, why?"


    "Where are you going to hide?"


    Sam turned her head to look around the galley/rec room combo. The only other rooms were engineering, the head, and the bunks. Likely all of those would be accessible by anyone on the ship.


    "Uh..."


    "And the accent?"


    Sam returned her attention back to me, a confused look on her face. I gave it some time to sink in. "The huge ship," she said more to the air in front of us than to me specifically. I could see the lights going on.


    "Did we ever find out what Zatochi is?" I asked X-Talia.


    The two-dimensional image, patiently waiting on one of the screens, perked up. "Oh yeah," her avatar dropped from one screen into the one below it and she pulled open a window. I inwardly chuckled at the pointless animation. The fact that she physically did things inside the screens was one of those things that just made her seem more human than she was.


    "Ok. So this is all timeline stuff and I''ll summarize these big blocks of information here. Basically, the Zatochi are a group of people who left Earth a very long time ago. They literally moved as far as possible away from the rest of us. You can think of them like a lost colony except that we eventually found them. Best I can tell they''re a bunch of pretentious assheads that think of themselves as something other than human. Though, the data I found is a little contradictory. Separating the Zatochi as a people from the Zatochi as a government or nation is a little bit iffy. They''re genetically altered to be hardier as a people. Their general policy is that pristine worlds with life are to be kept as wildlife preserves. Worlds that can be terraformed into something Earth-like are to be turned into wildlife preserves. And the large majority of them live in space stations. They''re extraordinarily territorial as a government type and have an extremely high military presence. All that said, it seems to be more for show. As long as you don''t cross their actual lines, they seem to be reasonable. Trying to peg the Zatochi as an overall people type, however, is a little more complicated, as it should be. Generally speaking, their people. Expect all the variation that comes with that."


    "Well, that''s not as bad as I was expecting," I returned my attention back to Sam, who was starting to look a little unsure. "I''m pretty sure that girl is Zatochi. She got in a fight with a pirate with a ship called the Black Adder. An adder is a snake, some type of legless, slithering, carnivorous creature with very potent venom. My gut is she''s either a mercenary or a bounty hunter, likely the latter if she''s after a pirate in this system."


    Sam turned the information over for a long while, her lips moving back and forth while pressed together in an expression that was absolutely adorable. Never mind the fact that she was still just standing there in a tank top and panties. Finally, she took a deep breath, returned her glowing ember eyes back to me, and said, "We can''t just leave her out there."


    I nodded and returned my attention back to the consoles. "We should be there in about 90 minutes."


    "What if it''s a trap?" Sam asked.


    "We''ll launch the fighter drone before we get there and approach with caution," I looked up towards X-Talia, who gave me a nod. "Well, let''s hope this doesn''t go terribly."


    I found the ship design rather odd. It was flatter and wider than the things I was used to. The aft end of the port and starboard nacelles looked like they contained actual freaking torch drives. This thing looked like it was made to strike fast and hard. Torch drives meant G forces, more so than the usual caused by gravitational pull. The outer hull was painted black, which reduced albedo, something most people didn''t care about unless they were the sort to sneak up on other ships. Alarm bells would have been ringing if the thing didn''t look chewed up and spit out. A large chunk of the forward port nacelle was missing. The shield points across the whole front and part of the dorsal region had been destroyed. The ship''s skin was pitted and packed with holes. However, it didn''t look that terribly damaged compared to what it had attacked.


    The other ship was on the edge of our long-range sensors, which admittedly were kind of shit. That one made the Retribution look like a toy. Some type of cargo hauler, largely modified to turn it into a small frigate. We were too far to get any real detail, but its shields were out, its weapons disarmed, and its power was likely down. I don''t know if the ship was dead, but if there was anyone alive on it, they were probably contacting their friends and trying to get things back online.


    I looked at the ship we were attempting to save the pilot of and turned to look at Sam. Her expression said that she also found the ship design perplexing. Sure, a few things have been weird in this sector, calling their credits "Sen," trusting people to dock without a docking computer, and ships with chemical-based reaction control systems. But honest-to-god torch drives? I couldn''t even imagine the fuel cost. It still had large gravity emitters, so there was no doubt it was more of an auxiliary acceleration system.


    "Thoughts?"


    Sam shook her head.


    "Contact the person before they run out of O2?" X-Talia suggested.


    I shrugged and hit the comm. "Black Adder, this is Grant of the Retribution. Do you copy?"


    There was a moment''s delay before a woman''s voice responded.


    "This is Zoia of the Black Adder. I copy loud and clear. Are you responding to my distress call?" The woman sounded tense.


    "Yes, we are.¡±


    ¡°Very low on O2. What is the chance you will be here within 20 minutes?"


    "ETA is five minutes. Which side is your docking port?"


    "Oh, that iss good." I could hear the sheer and utter relief in the girl''s voice. "Lock is on starboard side."


    "Standby."


    We drifted past the dead ship. There was no sign of any EMF drive keeping it stable, but it didn''t appear to be rotating. So either it had come to a complete rest before powering completely down or maybe there was a chemical-based Reaction Control System that didn''t require as much power. Stars only knew. We rotated the Retribution to line up the docking port. The thing looked weird. It had two separate rings around it as if the thing was designed to dock with two different sized locks. Hells, maybe it was. The ship itself was like no design I had ever seen. We drifted closer on EMF, making minor adjustments until the two locks kissed. There was a moment''s delay before the mechanical connection pulled tight, locking the two ships together as one unit.


    "Lock is connected," I said over the comm to the other ship.


    "Great. I''ll be right over."


    I looked up at Sam. "Shall we greet our new guest?"


    Sam pressed her lips into a thin line. As much as she had wanted to rescue the hapless person, this was gonna be the first time in several months that someone other than a bounty hunter¡ªand to be fair, this person was probably a bounty hunter¡ªwas going to see her. She gave me a quick nod as I pulled myself out of my seat and exited the galley. We had made sure we were going to be armed before this Zatochi person came on board. The whole thing was nerve-wracking. There was a loud clank as the locks opened on the other side. A moment''s delay as the tiny room filled with breathable atmosphere. Through the little viewport glass in the door, I could see a figure yanking off a helmet, and then the inner lock opened, and I got to take in my first sight of the Zatochi named Zoia.


    The woman who entered wasn''t particularly tall. While I couldn''t quite tell her body shape due to the considerably cool-looking black-with-pink-highlight hardsuit, she seemed to have a stockier frame. She had a duffel bag, also black, slung over one shoulder and the helmet of her hardsuit slung under the other. The helmet had protrusions like it had cat ears, complete with a pink interior, though they also looked to be packed with sensors, so I''d let that go. The woman herself had been stuck in a suit for well over an hour while the O2 dwindled, and her face showed it. Her dark brown hair with a shock of purple clung to her scalp and face via a thin sheen of sweat. There were slight blue bags under her eyes as though she hadn''t slept in a while, and she gave off an aura of being somewhat exhausted. Despite the initial look, her dark eyes met mine, and her lips parted in a confident, almost cocky grin. Her skin was an almond color, and there was a vague sense of Asian heritage in her eyes and facial shape, not as overt as X2, more subtle. Whether by heritage or design, I wasn''t sure. She shuffled her duffel bag higher up on her shoulder and held out a hand.


    "I thank you for timely rescue. Name is Zoia Rajirie."


    I instinctively moved my own arm out to take her hand, only to have her grasp me by the forearm in a shake I pretty much only used in fantasy games.


    "Uh, Grant Takata." Shit, I probably shouldn''t have used my actual name.


    "I cannot express how much I am happy to not be on my ship at the moment. Though I am going to strongly suggest that we dis..." The woman with the strange accent suddenly cut off. I knew why when she shifted her weight to look behind me, one eye going slightly wider, mimicking the way her cocky smirk seemed to move to that side of her face. "Well, damn, you are hot."


    Well, now I had to turn and look. Sam had only half of her body peeking out from behind the hatch. Her red cheeks turned a darker crimson and she seemed surprised. "Uh, thanks?"


    Zoia finally released my arm and gave a sharp wave. "Zoia Rajirie. It is a pleasure to be meeting you."


    "Sam."


    "Pleasure to be meeting you, Sam. Love the horns, by the way."


    "Oh."


    Was this girl flirting with Sam? She had literally been on the ship for just a few moments.


    "Oh, like I was saying, I suggest that we disengage as soon as possible. I am concerned that..."


    "MISSILE INBOUND," X-Talia shouted.


    Sam''s eyes went wide. I''m sure my eyes went wide, and I can only imagine that Zoia''s eyes went wide as she exclaimed, "Shit. That is what I was say."


    She said more, but I was too busy bursting past Sam in a mad dash to the control station.


    "X-Talia, get us separated."


    "Already on it."


    I slammed my ass into my chair and took the controls, dumping a bunch of the energy into the port side gravity emitter to pull us away from the other ship. Theoretically, that would also pull the other ship. For the first moment in my life, I found myself wishing I had some type of chemical propellant-based reaction control system. Maybe, just maybe, the people around here weren''t quite as backwards as I had originally thought.


    "Hatch is shut. Oh, where is your bridge?"


    I think I heard Sam explain that it was damaged as I activated the point-defense cannons and tried to get Zoia''s ship out of my line of fire. It wasn''t one missile, it was two, because of whatever law caused missiles to launch in twos. Maybe it was a buy-one-get-one-free deal all the installers had; maybe missiles just worked better in pairs. Technically speaking, that had been my experience. Once above the line of the ship, the point-defense cannon started firing. Taking out the first missile was easy. The second was too low, and I was prioritizing getting away from Zoia''s ship just a bit too much. Also, the missile wasn''t targeting us.


    Zoia screamed in anger as her ship seemed to split down the middle, exploding outward. Bits of debris pinging off the Retribution''s shields. A stream of vulgar curses started in a language I understood and very quickly moved into something I didn''t. The woman leaned over my chair, pointed at the other ship displayed on one of the screens, and said something.


    "What?"


    She repeated herself before realizing she wasn''t speaking a language I understood.


    "Any chance you have ability to fucking kill them?"


    I shrugged. "Yeah. Sure. Can I take parts from their ship?"


    I don''t give fuck.


    "X-Talia?" I asked.


    X-Talia''s avatar popped up on a side screen and gave me a nod. "Fighter drone is on a ballistic intercept trajectory."


    "Alright, let''s give them something to look at instead of watching our guns." I pulled the ship up around the debris field that was formerly Zoia''s ship. I could feel her hovering over me, white-hot rage emanating from the girl and burning holes into my screens. In the background, I could hear Sam slipping herself into a soft suit.


    "Two missiles inbound," X-Talia warned. We now had two functioning point defense cannons, and despite the size of the ship, they were only firing normal missiles. The missiles abandoned their fore-aft attack pattern to swerve out wide, trying to come at us from either side. That would have been a good tactic before we got that second cannon repaired.


    "I got starboard. You take port," I said to X-Talia. I didn''t wait for her to acknowledge.


    "Got it." We both said at the same time.


    I looked at the screen to find X-Talia looking back at me. ¡°I got mine first.¡±


    In a contest of human intuition versus machine probability calculations, the machine had won by 0.024 seconds. I didn''t even realize we were in a competition.


    "Very cute. Can we now fire at those fucking assholes?" Zoia asked in her thick accent from right behind me.


    "We''re about to. Yes," X-Talia said, moving her gaze from me to the girl behind me.


    "You are a strange AI."


    X-Talia shrugged.


    We were closing the distance more rapidly, and the pirate ship Zoia had attacked was showing up more clearly on the feeds. It was messed up. The hauler was easily six or seven times larger than the Black Adder, covered in shield points, with multiple turrets, and looking like some cosmic horror took chunks out of it. This spoke to the power of Zoia''s little ship.


    "Two more missiles inbound," X-Talia said.


    "Not a very fast fire rate. How are we on our trajectory?"


    "Ready to open fire in 32 seconds."


    The ripper cannon on the fighter drone, the new and improved fighter drone, ripped into the place X-Talia assumed the system''s cabinet to be. It was in a reasonably intact part of the ship, so it was fair to assume they were firing the missiles from the bridge. Tracer rounds from one of its turrets shot up towards the fighter drone but quickly faded as the drone passed.


    "Shit. I think we got it," X-Talia said, a note of surprise in her voice.


    "Anywhere else we should punch a hole?" I asked, more to the girl behind me than to X-Talia.


    "Fly by again and take out port side turrets. Don''t want them coming back on while I''m trying to board. Hey, you got a place to refill O2? And where is your head?"


    "O2''s over there," Sam said, pointing towards the wall only a few paces from the hatch that led out to engineering. "Head''s on the other side."


    Zoia dropped her bag on the table with a heavy thud. Then awkwardly reached back and pulled out an O2 tank from her hard suit''s pack. She shoved it into its receptacle and made her way to the head.


    I looked at Sam. She looked at me.


    "Well, she''s kind of..."


    "Intense?" Sam finished for me.


    "Yeah, that''s a good word for it."


    "Considering the situation, I guess it''s to be expected."


    I nodded my agreement.


    It only took a few minutes for the drone to take out the turrets and for our passenger to return from the head.


    "Sam, could you do me favor?" Zoia said, pulling the canister off its refilling rack and holding it out to the red-skinned splicer girl. "Can you shove that in its receptacle?"


    "Um, sure," Sam said hesitantly, taking the canister as Zoia turned her back to her and started unzipping her duffel bag. Out came a carbine, black and boxy. She unfolded the weapon, snapping it into place and slamming an ammunition magazine into its proper receptacle.


    "Ok. If you get me close, I think I can blow the lock and take care of the parasites inside."


    "We have a modified mining drone. We can just cut the lock open," I suggested.


    Zoia grinned. A toothy, evil-looking thing that caused my skin to itch. "I like the way you think. Let''s do that."


    "Did you want help?" I asked hesitantly as Zoia snapped her helmet back on. The modified mining drone was already busy cutting its way through the interior lock, and our new passenger was taking position up by our lock. She seemed to consider it for a moment.


    "No offense, but I don''t know you. Not worth the risk. Do you have room in your freezer?"


    "Room for what?" Sam asked.


    "Uh, a body or whatever parts are left of it," Zoia said matter-of-factly.


    "Uh, I can make some room," Sam offered.


    The woman behind the faceplate smirked again. "Just like that, huh? No questions asked? I''d like to know what you''ve been up to lately, but that''ll have to wait till later. As soon as I''m out the lock, take the ship out, just in case shit goes sideways and the ship goes up with me in it."


    "Sure," I said as Zoia made her way into the lock. I certainly wasn''t going to risk it now. I was rather glad she had rejected my offer of help. "Come on, Sam, let''s back off."


    It was well over an hour before we received a message.


    "Ship is clean. Request extraction."


    Again, Sam and I exchanged looks and we simultaneously shrugged.


    "X-Talia, can you bring us in nice and easy?"


    The two-dimensional avatar blinked as though confused. "You''re not gonna do it?"


    "No, we''re gonna have another person on board and I gotta fix our modified bed situation." I got out of my seat as Sam stripped herself back out of the soft suit. I could work pretty decently in the hard suit, but the soft suits were a bitch for moving around in, and it looked like Sam had intended to help me. We had originally removed the mattresses and racks on each side of the little hallway, placed down a chunk of metal to bridge the gap, and then stuffed the large mattress Sam had me buy a long time ago into the hole so we could share a bed. With another person, that was going to be awkward. I was hoping between the two of us, we could get the mattress out and the racks put back to normal before we managed to obtain our surprise passenger.


    Sam was remaking the bunks when Zoia reboarded, dragging most of a body minus the left leg into the galley. Clearly, this had been her mark. Fortunately, she had taken the time to wrap the majority of her victim up, so she wasn''t smearing blood across the deck plating. I appreciated that. With her back on board, I maneuvered the ship up to the dorsal side of the hauler and X-Talia set the modified mining drone to welding our two vessels together.


    Theoretically, there would be some other ship coming our way to render aid to their friends. Moving such a large vessel in the manner we were was a particularly cumbersome task. That said, space was large and vast. Even at a one or two G acceleration, it wouldn''t take terribly long before we were back in the thick of the asteroids and well away from the scene of the crime so to speak. Zoia was taking her time in the sany box, something I completely understood. When you spend a lot of time in a hard suit, you relish those moments. I had been mostly inactive, but I was still claiming the shower as soon as I was confident the new woman wasn''t going to murder us.


    When Zoia did get out of the shower, she looked like a completely different person. The lack of a hard suit made the change even more drastic. She had her dark brown hair with a shock of purple pulled back and hanging over her shoulders. Her dark cargo pants were tucked into her military-like boots. The fabric looked rather durable and was covered with large pockets tight at the thighs and hips, and fastened with a very professional-looking belt. From the waist down, she looked military. I couldn''t quite place what she looked like from the waist up. Her shirt had that tank top feel but was made of a thicker material tucked into her pants. Much like Sam''s graphic t-shirts, it had a symbol on the front, painted in a neon green that almost seemed to glow in the fluorescent overheads. Again, it looked like a tight, durable material. However, the opening under the arms that showed skin made it seem somewhere between loungewear and dress wear, and I just couldn''t place. She shrugged into a black jacket made of a similar durable-looking material, highlighted with vibrant purple lines and a couple of strips of neon green that matched the shirt. Sam was a hot gothic succubus doctor chick. Zoia was attractive, but also extraordinarily intimidating. She looked like she could kick my ass, and considering that she had very recently brought in a dead guy to put in my freezer, I think I''d be happy to drop her off with the first mining barge we came across, and not see the girl again. At least I was getting some salvage out of this deal.


    "That is better," Zoia said, taking a seat at the table and pulling out a tablet from her duffel bag. "You got Rift Drive on this boat?"


    ¡°No.¡±


    "Well, that complicates things. I''ll pay for a ride through the gate, though, and I''d like about half the salvage."


    I looked at Sam, who was starting to make breakfast. She looked at me as if asking with her eyes, "Are you gonna tell her?"


    "Uh, we can''t use the gate."


    "What? Why not?" Came Zoia''s confused question.


    "We pissed off the mercenaries by capturing a pirate vessel."


    "That is stupid," she said before realization seemed to dawn on her. "Fuck. This is Rixa." She tapped her lip for a few moments. "I did not think of that." She cocked an eyebrow and tilted her head. "But I had Rift Drive. So it wasn''t a problem."


    Apparently, I wasn''t the only one who talked to myself.


    Silence descended upon the rec room turned control room. Only the sounds of the stove and the gentle click of Sam''s spatula on a pan made any noise other than the ever-present environmental blower.


    "You know, this is pretty shitty day for me," Zoia started. "This is second ship I''ve lost, and I got quite attached to that one."


    "Well, how much was your guy worth?" Sam said, as though she was trying to lighten the mood.


    "45K. 38 if I go to the Zatochi. I wonder if I can cut him in half. Collect on both, you know. Of course, he''s worth less dead. Blowing up the ship was kind of a worst-case scenario, but the fucker never goes on station."


    I looked at Sam and gave her a meaningful look. She looked back, shrugged as though confused as to why I was a little annoyed with her asking, but her follow-up expression told me she had figured it out. She made an "o" with her mouth and grit her teeth.


    I tried to change the subject. "We''ve only got one contact at the moment, but maybe David could find you a ride out of the system."


    "David? You mean David Sullivan?"


    Small fucking galaxy or cluster of systems. "Uh, yes."


    Zoia shook her head. "That''s your only contact? Guy is piece of shit. You should stay away from him."


    "Yeah, but he''s kind of my only contact that doesn''t wanna shoot me."


    Zoia tilted her head as if to concede the point. "This is a bit of shitty system. You either play by SMG rules, get out, or get fucked."


    "I think we''ve pretty well been fucked," Sam said.


    Zoia turned to look at her. "Oh? How?"


    Sam pointed the spatula at the room at large. "This isn''t our ship. They filled ours with holes."


    "Whose ship is it?"


    "Sentinel Mercenary Group," I replied.


    Zoia burst out with a hearty laugh. Some terrible impersonation of a Slavic accent. That''s what it reminded me of. All she had to do was ask for some vodka and start telling me about the old country, and she''d fit in with some old movie portraying Old Earth Russians. Rajirie. I''d have to look up the last name. Maybe it was Slavic. That said, my last name was Japanese, and you didn''t hear me screwing up my L''s.


    Sam finished, started dishing out breakfast, and I joined her and Zoia at the table. X-Talia was being quiet, playing the part of the simple ship AI. Our unexpected passenger brooded over her breakfast.


    "If you can¡¯t go to a station, how are you salvaging material?"


    "Cutting them up, using the parts for various things, and selling extra stuff to David for other stuff we need."


    "You know, he''s gotta be ripping you off on price."


    I shrugged. "He''s the only contact I''ve got."


    Zoia shook her head. "Nobody likes that guy."


    "What about that girl that''s with him?" Sam asked, pointing at me because she hadn''t actually met the person.


    "X2," I filled in.


    Zoia shook her head again. "That''s called Stockholm syndrome. I''m pretty sure he bought her like 30 years ago."


    "30 years? There''s no way the girl is that old."


    "Cosmetics. He keeps her looking young."


    My eyes went to Sam, who gave me a sideways shrug as if to say, "Yeah, I can do that."


    I let out a long sigh. "Can anybody pick you up?"


    Zoia tapped a lip. "I got some people who owe me favor. I''ll send out message as soon as I can. If you don''t mind, I''m going to eat this meal, use your head one more time, and then crash. I don''t think I''ve slept in like, 20 or 30 hours."


    ¡°Bunks are right down there."


    The girl gave a sharp nod of her head, poked at her tablet, pushed it off to the side, and then started shoving the rest of the food in her face.


    My focus landed on Sam once Zoia was in the rack. She gave me a weary smile and a shrug. I found her uncertainty comforting. How had it come to this? We now had a bounty hunter on board and another body in the freezer. Some universe based humor to slap me in the face.

 19: Refactor 4

    Author''s notes: Okay, I''m not back, but I''m sort of back. I hope. I hate 2nd job, but It wasn''t just 2nd job keeping me away. I built a deck, re-did 2 roofs, sided a house, and welcomed a new child into the world. I''m exhausted. I think I''ve got one more chapter recorded and 2 possible starts to a next book, though I''m leaning toward another sci-fi fantasy thingy. More on that later.


    Zoia was poking at her tablet. Sam and I were playing a card game. In the background, X-Talia was busy cutting apart the hauler. I had already made plans with David to sell him the shield generator and its attached Power Core in exchange for one of the many shipboard mini factories. Much like the mini forge, it was a power hog and produced a lot of excess heat. The other Power Core, which had gracefully shut down, would be installed in our own hauler not too far away from the mini forge. With a little bit of automation, we''d be able to put cut-up pieces of broken spaceship into the mini forge, extrude them out as feedstock for the mini factory, and turn some of it into useful parts, mostly various shaped steel plates.


    X-Talia and I were working on the third prototype of our fighter drone. One issue we had been having was the size of components. We kept taking Power Cores, Gravity Drives, gravitational field emitters, and all other components we could get our hands on from class B ships and then trying to make them into a class A ship. This left them rather big and bulky, though overpowered. It hurt my soul to think I was going to be exchanging large, expensive class B equipment for smaller, cheaper, and still likely used class A equipment, but it needed to be done. We were going to need a more compact drone system if we wanted to pack several of them into a freight container.


    This brought up another project. X-Talia and I were working on the design for our new ship. We had gone through a lot of renditions and arguments over the best way to do that. The main problem was the frame. Initially I wanted to build the thing in modular components, starting essentially with boxes welded together for our bridge and galley and other systems and adding on from there. The issue was that it caused structural instability. Our final goal was a rather large vessel, and by the time we got to a class C size, all the original parts would have to be replaced with something more permanent, lest the ship break itself apart with us inside.


    Sam''s suggestion was to build a frame and just fill it in as we went. It sounded ridiculous, but it turned out to be the best idea. Essentially, we were going to build an exoskeleton, a solid structural framework that we could slowly fill out. Then we could put armor plating on top of that skeleton once the innards were done. It would likely look quite strange, like an angry shark with a bunch of teeth up front but all bones in the back until complete, with only a few runs of cabling and machinery down the center looking like visible entrails. As we slowly built out auxiliary power generators, distributors, and shield generators, we would be able to encase the whole thing in shields. We¡¯d have essentially an armored hull and an interior airtight hull, and enough space in between where we could keep some type of repair drone system. We¡¯d use standard freight containers as the basis for our hangar bays holding our drone fleet. Well, fighter corps. A fleet assumed other ships, much like our current hauler, which was being converted into a completely autonomous salvage reclamation drone. So, in a sense, we were indeed building a fleet.


    Of course, the whole "we need an exoskeleton" thing caused its own problem. Primarily, we couldn''t build it. We needed to order the thing, and we weren''t currently making enough money. There also weren''t any shipyards in the Rixa system that could use. So we were still left with having to get out of this system. We really needed to capture something that had an intact Rift Drive.


    "So Grant, you want to explain your end of the story?" Zoia asked.


    I looked up with a cocked eyebrow and she turned her tablet towards me to show my face, my list of crimes, and the bounty still on my head. Well, fuck. The bounty hunter had just found out I had a bounty on my head. The question was whether or not she knew that Sam also had a bounty. I let out a long sigh. "I used to fly a single-person freighter with no Rift Drive. Some pirates pulled me out of the Rift, I killed them, and took their ship which had a Rift Drive."


    "Yeah, but that''s just self-defense," Zoia countered as though my story didn''t make sense. And it technically didn''t when you excluded Sam''s story.


    "I killed all of them. That would be excessive. And then I basically kept the ship and ran away."


    "Oh?" She cocked her eyebrow and continued, "Insurance fraud?"


    I shrugged. "I''m not really sure." After that, we got chased by a bounty hunter and I ended up throwing a bunch of lead out the cargo hold in order to stop his AI-controlled ship. So basically, the other tacked-on offense is littering.


    "Ok. That explains the easy one." Zoia swiped the screen of her tablet, looked at Sam, and said, "Human experimentation?"


    Sam''s crimson face went concerningly pale. "I worked for a pharmaceutical research company. I didn''t know I was doing it," she squeaked.


    Zoia shrugged and returned her attention back to her tablet. I was cursing myself for keeping my arc pistol in my bunk next to the hard suit. Sam and I exchanged glances. When I looked back towards Zoia, she was idly scrolling through her tablet like she had been for the previous hour.


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    "Do you usually ask people with a bounty for their side of the story?"


    Zoia looked up as if surprised that we were still talking about the subject.


    "Oh, no. But I don''t take sketchy contracts."


    "Sketchy?"


    Zoia shrugged. "You are not the only one here accused of piracy. One government''s pirate is another government''s privateer. You are also accused of insurance fraud and littering. Sam here is a little more up my alley, but If I had a handful of Sen for every corporate shit job I''ve seen, I''d be a rich woman. Jonathan there," she pointed towards the freezer, "human trafficking, murder, rape, the list goes on but oddly enough, piracy is not one of them."


    "So you''re not gonna try to capture us?" Sam asked, her voice quiet and hesitant.


    For far too long, Zoia sat considering the question. "I am not sure it is worth it. It is like a month and a half in the Rift just to turn you in, and then I would likely be dead without you. You get tagged for something out here and then I will reconsider."


    I didn''t feel particularly great about that. She could just be lying. Then again, we did save her life, so she was likely grateful for that. Still, she was sitting on almost 50,000 credits, but if she knew we had prices on our heads, why would she have brought it up? I also had to remind myself that we were in a new sector. A new sector meant new rules and Rixa was the ass end of that sector. Our bounties hadn''t changed despite the fact that we had stolen a mercenary group''s gunboat. None of this shit made any real sense.


    Zoia Rajirie was attractive, intelligent, and a bit intimidating. Her accent was starting to grow on me and yet, I was extraordinarily happy to see her go. The person who supposedly owed her a favor ran a rather large six-container freight hauler. I couldn''t imagine the jump into Rixa being that profitable, which certainly lent credence to the claim that he owed her. I stood near the hatch to the galley, hand on my arc pistol, waiting for the tables to turn as Zoia gave Sam a tight hug. The woman disappeared into the lock, duffel bag slung over her shoulder. As soon as I heard the other ship disconnect, I turned my attention to X-Talia.


    "Shields on?"


    "Shields are on," X-Talia responded.


    "Ready to rotate if they start firing."


    "Ready to rotate and open fire," came the AI''s response.


    "I think we''re fine," Sam said, glaring at me like it was my fault that I didn''t trust a bounty hunter with people who had bounties. At least I didn''t have to help move the body from the freezer. I watched on the screen as the larger freighter disappeared into the black, utter relief washing over me.


    ¡°We should move our operations.¡±


    X-Talia nodded her assent. "Been packing up for a while now."


    It would be slow going to move our drone freight hauler turned miniature salvage processing plant along with all its salvage it still had left to pull, but space was vast and even a few hours of one-G acceleration would pull the whole place thousands of kilometers. A couple of alterations in the course and we''d never be found.


    Never be found. The thought struck me as we found something. A single miner tucked into the asteroid belt working away at some honey pot he¡¯d found. We were just passing by, a slow-moving mass of metal and ships drifting spinward. The guy probably hadn''t even noticed us. I''m surprised we noticed him. Without X-Talia, we probably wouldn''t have. You generally knew where most of the miners were because they were broadcasting their transponder IDs. It allowed them to keep in contact with each other. But the ring around Azore was swarming with miners, some of them independents, some of them pirates, and who knew what else. Even the heavily populated rings with their unfathomable amount of material being mined by flocks of miners were mind-numbingly vast. Whoever this guy was, he wasn''t broadcasting his transponder, and I wondered if he was somehow like us. Then I began to wonder about other things. Where were the pirates based out of? Was there a hidden outpost out here? Did they simply switch their transponder IDs over to the Sentinel Mercenary Group and dock at the station? What did the Sentinel Mercenary Group protect people from? Or was it just a racket? I wonder if we could eat them. Take out the pirates, then take the place of the mercenaries? Could that be a service?


    "X-Talia, can you compile me a list of everything the Sentinel Mercenary Group does?"


    "Sure, but that''ll take some time. I''d have to make several queries on the local net."


    "No hurry."


    I stared at the screens, seemingly waiting for what, I wondered. I would get back to working on something once we arrived at whatever destination we were heading to. Probably could stop fairly soon. Maybe we should pull out of the Rings. A lot of mercenaries, pirates, and miners were in here, there''s probably a lot more empty space just out of it. And what was a few more days'' worth of hauling things back and forth?


    "Hey, Grant?" said Samantha from somewhere behind me.


    "Yes, Doctor?" I turned my head to look back at her. Sam was standing there, staring at me, eyes slightly wide and face slightly flushed. I was momentarily confused until I realized that I had called her Doctor. It didn''t always trigger this reaction, but it did more often than not. She regained control of herself and cleared her throat.


    "I was going to request putting the bed back the way it was. But now I have a slightly different idea."


    I cocked an eyebrow and waited.


    "Well, you know, on account of I''m the doctor, I think you probably need a thorough examination," a grin spread across her face.


    I turned my head back to the screens and checked to make sure everything was working accordingly. I was gonna have to have a talk with Sam about our relationship. I wasn''t exactly sure where we were, but for now, I think I was gonna do whatever the fuck she decided to tell me to.

 20: Refactor 5

    I learned one or two things in the last couple of months. Firstly, the framework for a starship, in comparison to shield generators or power cores, really wasn''t all that expensive. Secondly, you could have it towed to anywhere you wanted via a Rift-capable tug. That was important as we couldn''t go through the gate without being noticed. Theoretically, we could have hired somebody to jump us out of here, but Rixa had kind of become my hunting grounds. Well, I guess our hunting grounds. Sam had pretty much gotten into it just as I had, and X-Talia was always up for taking on the pirates or sometimes the mercenaries. They had gotten wiser in the last four or so months, and the pickings have been starting to dry up. It''s getting to the point where they either flew in groups of four or better or were just straight up hard to find. I''m fairly certain there has been a concerted effort on their part to find us, but space is vast and in the asteroid fields, one chunk of metal looked a lot like the other when you didn¡¯t have a transponder squeaking out your location or use of the grave drive to alter your position. We were all pretty much invisible. That said, we did have to move operations. We were found and fortunately for us, it had been a small fleet.


    We had gotten the frame. It would be a class C sized ship. All we had was class B sized parts, so we were gonna wire the thing up with multiple redundancies. Not as efficient when using credits, but I wasn''t paying for most of the parts anyway. Sure, there was the cabling and all the auxiliary processors and stuff, but most of the hull plating and structural supports were coming from the melted and reworked pirate ships, and everything else was being traded through David for those few things we couldn¡¯t make or salvage. We had a lot of missiles in stock. Currently, we had a disagreement on what this ship''s name was gonna be. I was going for the Revenge. Sam wanted to name it Rixa after the star system it was being created in, and X-Talia had a whole list of names, all of which were technically better than both our suggestions, but I was unwilling to admit that.


    Our little drone hauler turned factory was working at full speed to crank out hull plating. Its radiators glowed a cherry red as it tried to dissipate the waste heat into the cold vacuum of outer space. The as-of-yet unnamed vessel was starting to take form. It was gonna have two hulls, an inner hull built much like all the other ships I''d ever been on and an outer hull that would be armor plated. The space between the two hulls would have a host of repair drones along with a lot of the wiring and other cables needed to feed the shield and gravity emitters. There would be a total of six freight containers, three on each side, to function as drone bays. Right now, we only had two of the freight containers. There was somewhat of a catwalk that ran the entire length down the spine with places marked out for the various power cores, shield generators, and gravity drives. A nice fat location marked out for a Rift Drive should we ever be fortunate to get one. Painfully slowly, we were enclosing that stretch of open inner space. At the moment, only the head was enclosed.


    The bridge still smelled like fresh paint. Most of its screens and consoles had been new for the sole fact that we needed to keep everything compatible. Beyond that was a large spacious galley. Radially from there, we had four rooms, two on each side. The port side had bedrooms, and the starboard side had Sam''s Medical Bay and the head. Beyond that was main engineering and X-Talia. X-Talia was a rack servers. A lot of servers. She took up a rather large area and produced a lot of heat. Currently, we had a lot of radiators outside of this area radiating the heat out into the void. That had been a lesson in ship design. I was painfully unaware of just how many pipes and conduit it took to move that much heat from the inside to the outside. Space was cold, but there was no conduction or convection, which made getting rid of the heat difficult.


    Other things on our shipbuilding exercise that I somehow had not been capable of mentally placing: all the auxiliary systems we needed to survive. Waste reclamation, water recycling, gas storage, etc. The list seemed to go on. Fortunately, this stuff was handled mostly with standardized modules designed to attach underneath the flooring. In many ways, shipbuilding had been reduced to buying a module and clamping a hose to its ports. It made it easy for an idiot like me. X-Talia was the one handling the hard part of figuring out how to get everything to work appropriately and where it should go. On the same note, however, as X-Talia''s server rack grew, so too did her ability to automate things. We already had a dozen spider-like drones swarming around the deck, welding plating in place. A small fleet of salvage drones, basically converted mining drones, were taking apart our most recent kills and feeding them into the mini foundry. An untold number of limpet drones, small flying things that move small items from one point to another, worked perpetually to keep things moving. It was X-Talia''s true power unleashed, and that power would only grow with time. It was almost scary.


    "What do you think about this?" Sam asked, turning her tablet around to show me a digital rendering of a nude woman who had long white hair, pupil-less white eyes, pointed ears, and onyx-black skin.


    "It''s a Drow?¡±


    "Yeah, how did you know?"


    "It''s a common race in fantasy games."


    "Oh. Well, what do you think?"


    "About what exactly?"


    She put the tablet next to her head, smiled, and said, "Me."


    It took me a second to figure out what she was talking about. We had been sitting at our new galley table. I was assembling one of the stupid spider drones, and Sam had been sitting in her chair in nothing but a black tank top and panties, with her red-skinned legs stretched out and her feet on the table. She''d been playing with her tablet for a while, and now I knew what she was doing. It took me just another moment to realize she was talking about changing her appearance.


    "You wanna look like a drow?"


    Sam gave me a wicked grin. "I''d keep the horns and tail."


    It would seem that my hot succubus Gothic Doctor Chick wanted to now be a hot drow Gothic Doctor Chick. It wasn''t my body. She could do what she wanted, but I could get into it.


    "I''m not gonna complain, but it might clash with your wardrobe a bit."


    Sam turned the tablet around and looked down at it. "Shit. You''re right."


    I shrugged. "Just add a little white for contrast."


    Sam poked at a tablet. "Mm." It had cost a small fortune to outfit Sam''s laboratory. She had been giddy about it. Watching her excitement had been near infectious. Once she had calmed down over all the new equipment and getting everything in its right place and fussing over cabinet layout, her grin had changed from excitement to something more devious. Or more specifically, deviant. She then proceeded to enlist my help in fulfilling some sexual fantasies. I wasn''t complaining, but there had to be more to the succubus motif than just the looks. The girl was insatiable.


    X-Talia popped into the seat across the table from me. She could do that now due to the holo projectors mounted in the ceiling. She also had enough cameras installed that she could keep an eye on everything. Sam had the weird fetish of making sure X-Talia could see us when we did anything together. X-Talia was still using the two-dimensional animated image. She appeared facing directly towards me, which meant it would probably be a strange angle for Sam. The girl made of blue light grinned, her hair gently floating down to her shoulders as though she were in an almost weightless environment.


    "There''s a message."


    "From who?"


    "Sam has a message."The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    I stared at X-Talia. Sam also looked up at her.


    "Why are you telling me?" I asked, because it was the obvious question. X-Talia''s image shifted, likely changing to something that would be perfectly reasonable from Sam''s angle but made her look flattened and distorted from mine.


    "I just forwarded it to your tablet, but with your permission, I''ll divulge the information Zoia  wanted to send directly to Grant."


    "Oh, okay."


    X-Talia''s image flickered back so that it was pointed at my perspective.


    "Zoia?" With that, I looked towards Sam because she didn''t seem surprised she was getting messages from Zoia . Sam noticed and looked up. She smiled.


    "Yeah, Zoia."


    "You''ve been talking to her?"


    "Mmhmm," Sam responded, clearly delving into the chunk of the message that was meant for her eyes only.


    "Okay." Then I turned my attention back to X-Talia. "So what''s with me?"


    "She would like some help."


    I cocked an eyebrow, hoping X-Talia would continue. "Zoia has been tracking a guy with a 125,000 bounty." My eyebrows rose on their own accord this time. That was a lot of money. "The guy fell off the map a long time ago and hasn''t been heard or seen from in a while. Zoia found some information that points to the guy''s new name and what he''s currently doing."


    With that, X-Talia seemed to be finished. The slight smirk and the way her eyebrows twitched told me she wanted a leading question.


    I obliged. "And what does this have to do with me?"


    "Reginald Maximus. He''s in charge of the Sentinel mercenary group."


    "You have got to be freaking kidding me. How does a wanted man end up running a mercenary company? Did nobody vet the guy?"


    X-Talia shrugged.


    Sam giggled. She looked up, her eyes twitching between me and X-Talia before apologizing and returning her attention back to her message. How long had she been talking to Zoia? Seemed like an awfully long time to be reading a "hey, how you doing" type thing.


    "So?"


    "So what?" I asked.


    "Are we gonna help her?"


    "Of course, we are," Sam answered.


    My attention went back to Sam. "We are?"


    "Yeah. Why wouldn''t we?"


    "Because she''s a scary bounty hunter and might take us in," I pointed out the obvious.


    "Nah, she''s a sweetheart."


    "A sweetheart?" That was the last thing I could ever imagine Zoia Rajirie being called.


    "She''s also curious if we''re willing to install a docking clamp for her ship to attach to ours."


    "A docking clamp?"


    "I''ve already altered the design," X-Talia replied, much to my surprise.


    "I''ve already been voted out on this, haven''t I?"


    Both women nodded.


    "Ok then," I pressed my lips together and returned my attention back to the circuits I was trying to put together. X-Talia winked out of existence. Sam giggled again.


    Sure seemed like a rather long message.


    "So, Grant?" Sam asked, leaning back in her chair and setting her tablet down off to the side, putting her full attention on me.


    "Sam?"


    "We''re together now, right? Like a couple?"


    We hadn''t really discussed it very much. It was a situation where we were stuck together. Thing was even if we were in such a situation where we weren''t stuck, I couldn''t actually see separating. That might just be my lack of experience with relationships, but in general, I thought things were going pretty well.


    "Um."


    "Like if we were not, uh, if we didn''t have to worry about bounties or anything, and we could just live on a station, we''d still be together, right?"


    "I think so."


    "Right. So we''re a couple then?"


    "Yes." I tried to say it with some type of certainty so it didn''t sound like a question.


    She smiled. "Great. So if we''re sticking together, then I really need to know your stance on polyamorous relationships."


    "Huh?"


    Sam giggled again. I must have looked just as confused as I felt. She leaned forward and poked the table.


    "What is our policy for seeing, dating, or just having casual sex with other people?"


    "Well, I thought that, well, I thought that we''re kind of seeing each other exclusively because there is nobody else."


    Sam giggled again. "Right, but let''s assume we didn''t have to be completely exclusive out of necessity. What is our policy?"


    "I don''t know."


    "Ok. So we should probably figure that out. Um, I guess, question number one. Let''s go with, I guess, casual sex. In our relationship, is it ok for me to visit a brothel?"


    "No."


    "Ok. Why?"


    Was this something I had to be delicate with or was this something to just be blunt with? "Because I don''t want other guys'' dicks in my girlfriend."


    Sam laughed, a bit more than a giggle this time. "Fair enough, but what about girls?"


    I was trying to have a problem with the concept, but the only thing I was coming up with was some type of arousal. "Um."


    "Ok," Sam said rather cheerfully. "So if it helps, my stance on casual sex with other people is that I''m ok with it so long as I get to approve of it and possibly join, or watch, or record it."


    There had to be something more to the succubus thing with this girl than just the looks. Sam was definitely a weirdo. "OK. I think I get it."


    "Ok. So what about actual relationships?"


    I thought about it for a moment, but I still couldn''t force myself to have a problem with other women. It had to be a guy thing. "I like the idea of approval, and I still don''t like the idea of sharing you with another dude."


    "OK. On my end of things, I want approval and I want the option to be part of it."


    "OK. Is that settled then?"


    "I think it is," Sam said, nodding her head with an air of finality. "So for the second part of this..."


    "Second part?"


    "I would like your approval to have a relationship, including sex, with Zoia."


    "Zoia?"


    "Yeah."


    "The scary bounty hunter chick?"


    "She''s not scary," Sam chuckled. I sat back in my seat and thought about it.


    "Well?" Sam prompted.


    "I mean, I guess."


    "Great! Unfortunately for you, I don''t think she''s into guys."


    "I think I''m ok with that."


    Sam picked up her tablet, flipped it back on, and started poking at it. I was left to sit there and wonder, what the hell? The whole conversation had been a little odd, but as this was my first real relationship, maybe it was normal. There definitely had to be more to the succubus thing than just the looks.


    "Sam. Is there more to the succubus thing than just the looks?"


    She looked up from her tablet and gave me a shrug. "I don''t know. My childhood was a little messed up. I''m setting ground rules now, so if there is something to it, at least consent is involved."


    "Ok."


    Sam went back to poking at her tablet. I went back to poking at my systems control boards or whatever the heck it was, but the only thing I could focus on was that Sam was now indeed my girlfriend, and she also wanted to be Zoia''s girlfriend. Sam would be with another girl, and that got me a little hot and bothered. I looked up from my work and ran my eyes from her black painted toenails along her calves, knees, thighs, her black panties, and up her black tank top to her sexy little necklace. She was still poking at her tablet.


    "Sam."


    "Hmm?"


    "I''m horny now."


    The woman grinned. "Oh? Are you implying that it''s my fault?"


    "Yeah, I think so."


    "And you want me to take care of that?"


    "Yeah, I think so."


    Sam poked at her tablet a few more times and set it off to the side. "X-Talia?"


    "Yes?" said X-Talia as she popped into her previous position, her two-dimensional form facing Sam.


    "Grant is horny."


    X-Talia lifted an eyebrow. "What do you want me to do about it?"


    "Start recording."


    X-Talia gave a snort of amusement and then said, "Sure," and then disappeared. Sam turned back towards me. "You think Zoia would be willing to watch?"


    "I... This is just getting weird."

 21: Bounty 1

    Zoia Rajirie''s new ship wasn¡¯t much more than a small shuttle. The living quarters were probably smaller than the Flying Brick¡¯s. A thought that made me feel a bit nostalgic. It took her a while to get from her ship and through the airlock, but it seemed to take even longer with all the side hugs, kisses on the cheek, and cheerful greetings between her and Sam. The two clearly had a much stronger relationship than I had been aware of. It took some time for Zoia to get settled in, but soon afterward, we were all huddled around the common room table. Zoia patched into the ship¡¯s holo-projectors and began her presentation.


    She started by pulling up an image of the system that hovered above the table, accompanied by a side image of a clean-cut man who looked like a navy officer. While the bounty hunter was preparing her visuals, Sam rummaged through one of the bags Zoia had brought and started pulling out junk food. Bags were opened, contents poured into bowls, and the bowls ended up on the table. Sam then sat down next to me, a candy-coated stick of something poking out of her mouth, slowly getting smaller.


    ¡°All right,¡± Zoia said in her thick accent, enlarging a flat image of the man¡¯s face and overlaying some additional information. ¡°This guy is going by Reginald Maximus. He¡¯s currently the leader of the Sentinel Mercenary Group, and here¡¯s his bounty.¡±


    A reward of 150,000 Sen appeared underneath his image.


    ¡°Obviously, that¡¯s a lot of money,¡± Zoia continued. ¡°But since the guy commands a fleet of ships, he hasn¡¯t had many takers. Those who¡¯ve tried are dead. He¡¯s smart enough to stay on his ships instead of spending time on stations.¡±


    ¡°And you think we¡¯d like to help with this because we¡¯ve already made the guy an enemy and are slowly chewing away at his fleet anyway,¡± I stated. It wasn¡¯t really a question.


    Zoia nodded, but didn¡¯t seem satisfied with that being the only reason. ¡°Yes, for the most part. You¡¯re the only group with a general plan to convert his resources into your own. What you¡¯re doing is kind of illegal, but it sits in one of those gray areas. The amount of money he¡¯s worth isn¡¯t worth the time it would take to go after him.¡±


    X-Talia projected her image into one of the empty chairs. Zoia looked at her, and the two locked gazes.


    ¡°What?¡± X-Talia asked.


    Zoia shook her head.


    Sam finished chewing and asked the leading question Zoia had been waiting for. ¡°Then why are you here?¡±


    Zoia grinned as I picked up one of the candy-coated sticks. Apparently, they were pretzels. Pretty good candy coated pretzels.


    ¡°Because of this,¡± Zoia said, tapping on her pad. A second number appeared beneath the 150,000 sen. This one read 180,000 and included a symbol I didn¡¯t recognize. ¡°He¡¯s wanted in this sector for a lot of shit. Smuggling, rape, murder, slave trade, arms dealing, the list goes on. He¡¯s also wanted by the Zatochi for the same things, but the Zatochi have a more vested interest in taking him down. They can¡¯t just drop into the system and blow his fleet up, though. That could be perceived as an act of war. You¡¯re not Zatochi, so you can¡¯t touch that second number, but I can, which means we can claim both bounties.¡±


    "Why does the Zatochi have a higher priority on him?" I asked, less because of the information she gave me and more because of the tone in which she had said it.


    Zoia gave a sideways grin. "Because Mr. Maximus here is Zatochi, and the Zatochi like to think of themselves as better than humans in every way. We are genetically more adapted to the rigors of space. We are more intelligent. We have better technology. We are physically superior. We treat our planets better. Our starbases are better. And our society is better. However, anyone who has gone to any system with their eyes open can clearly see Zatochi society is pretty much the same. Now, our friend here," Zoia motioned toward the image of the man, "is living proof that Zatochi society is not quite as superior as the Zatochi governing body would like everyone to believe. He¡¯s a contradiction to their narrative."


    "So, I take it we¡¯re going to discuss options for taking his fleet apart?" I asked.


    Zoia nodded, and X-Talia pulled up a holographic whiteboard, saying she was ready to take notes. Sam was passing out drinks.


    "OK. So ideally, what we would do is bait out the flagship, disable it, and go in to pull out Maximus. This is not going to work. We would need a larger crew of highly trained boarding specialists. We don¡¯t need the guy alive, but we do need him to be not blown to bits. Thoughts on how to accomplish this, go." Zoia said, releasing her portion of the presentation and flopping into a chair. She picked up a glass Sam had filled and leaned back.


    "Can we bait him out and set an ambush?" Sam asked in a tone that suggested she wasn¡¯t sure it was possible.


    "In order for the tactic to be successful, we¡¯d need to isolate the specific ship without the rest of the fleet and then win in that particular engagement," X-Talia said, essentially laying out the ideal scenario.


    "And we can¡¯t do that because he¡¯d just send a large fleet of ships.¡± Zoia said, giving the obvious counter and that was the obvious tactic out of the way first."


    "OK," Sam said, leaning back in her chair. "Just throwing this out there, but is it possible we could pretend to be one of their ships? Maybe start squawking one of their ID codes just to get close?"


    "A Trojan horse tactic," X-Talia said, bringing up an image on the holo-projector of the framework of our half-completed ship and the other ships we had access to, which had been heavily modified to function as salvage units.


    "You¡¯re certainly not getting this ship close, but I don¡¯t see why we can¡¯t capture an enemy vessel or build one similar," Zoia said.


    X-Talia nodded and posted Trojan Ship to the whiteboard.


    "Can we get their command codes?" I asked, looking toward X-Talia, figuring she¡¯d have the best chance of pulling that off.


    X-Talia stared back at me. "I have no software for hacking things. I could learn, but that would take a lot of time."


    "What is your specialty?" Zoia asked X-Talia.


    "I¡¯m an adaptive personality matrix. My main function is to act human and serve in support roles."


    Zoia gave a nod and reached for one of the bowls of snacks, her curiosity sated.


    "Sabotage," Sam said with a wide grin. I had a feeling she was really getting into this.


    "We can''t go onto the station," I said, bursting her bubble.


    "But I can," Zoia said, reinflating Sam''s enthusiasm. X-Talia nodded and added it to the whiteboard.


    For a while, our planning session went silent, with nobody having any new ideas to throw out.


    "You said he mostly stays on his ship because he knows he''s got bounty hunters after him, right? Can we, I don¡¯t know, make him paranoid about his own people?" I asked.


    "You mean psychological warfare?" Sam asked.


    I shrugged.


    Zoia motioned toward the whiteboard. "Add it with a couple of question marks."


    X-Talia did as instructed.


    "OK, let''s go back to sabotage for a moment. We can''t hack into their systems, correct?" I asked, looking at X-Talia.


    "Correct."Stolen story; please report.


    "That just means we can''t control the ship, right? Is there a way we could track it?"


    "Placing a tracking device would not be terribly difficult. The problem is, it needs to be in their computer system so it can send off its location using the ship''s comms," Zoia added.


    "What about attaching a unit to the hull that has its own power supply and comms relay? It doesn¡¯t need to be terribly powerful," X-Talia suggested.


    Zoia gave the two-dimensional blue and white avatar a glance, but seemed to consider it.


    "We could probably design something like that," I said. "Add it to the whiteboard."


    X-Talia did as instructed.


    "If you¡¯re gonna do that, why not just put an explosive on it?" Zoia asked.


    "Well, if we can do that," Sam added.


    "Might be kind of difficult to get away with," Zoia said, but the suggestion was added to the whiteboard nonetheless.


    "How do we know whose ship is whose?" Sam asked, shoving another one of the candy-coated pretzels in her mouth.


    "That''s a pretty good question. I think there¡¯s evidence to support that a lot of the Sentinel Mercenary Group flies out into the asteroid field and then becomes pirates. They switch their transponders to a different code as they come closer to the station," I said.


    "I can build a database of transponder codes, and we can take a bunch of images to slowly cross-reference various ships," X-Talia suggested.


    "Yeah, but you can¡¯t hack into flight control to keep track of the ships that are in and around the stations," Sam said.


    "Don¡¯t have to," Zoia and I said almost at the same time.


    I continued, "Inbound and outbound ships on the station are public data. Anyone can just go look at what ship is connected to which dock."


    "All we need to keep an eye on them is to have a data tablet in a storage unit somewhere," Zoia suggested. "It just needs to take a snapshot of the inbound and outbound registry every 30 or 60 minutes and send it out."


    "Oh," Sam said. "Well, what about pictures?"


    ¡°I can take pictures," Zoia said.


    "Can we put, like, a drone in their resupply deliveries?" I asked.


    Everyone stared at the center of the table for a moment, and then the suggestion popped up on the whiteboard.


    We kept talking back and forth about various things that we could do in more detail. Other than trying to gather as much information as possible about how many mercenary and pirate vessels there were, we didn¡¯t really have anything concrete to go on. Our main idea involved slowly chipping away at the pirate/mercenary group.


    We decided to focus on some drone designs, while Zoia worked on getting images of the various ships that docked at port. The only other noteworthy moment was a brief exchange between Zoia and X-Talia.


    Zoia had asked how we planned on controlling the drones. Sam said X-Talia handled it. When Zoia asked for clarification on the number of drones X-Talia had control of and how they functioned, I noticed a brief pause, as if X-Talia was thinking. That pause struck me as unusual, there was no reason for a computer with X-Talia''s processing power to need time to think. I wasn¡¯t sure if Zoia caught it, but when X-Talia explained the number and types of drones she was controlling, from the fighter drones currently stored in small drone bays attached to the ship, to the collector limpets transporting materials between the salvage drones and the auto smelter, Zoia frowned. Her brow furrowed in thought, and I noticed X-Talia¡¯s reaction. She stared blankly at Zoia, as if waiting for more questions. I wasn¡¯t sure why, but something about it felt off. After a bit more discussion, we concluded that we needed to gather more information. Zoia and Sam left to get Zoia set up in Sam¡¯s room, and they ended up watching a vid.


    I made my way to the bridge and ensured the lock between the bridge and the rest of the ship was shut tight. I slumped down in the pilot¡¯s chair and stared at the screen.


    "X-Talia?" I said to the empty screens and waited for the two-dimensional blue and white avatar of X-Talia to appear.


    "What¡¯s up?" she asked cheerfully.


    "What happened?"


    X-Talia tilted her head, her long hair made of blue light shifting to fall off her shoulder in slow motion.


    "Would you like to be more specific?" she asked.


    "You said something that caught Zoia¡¯s attention. She looked concerned. What happened?"


    Again, X-Talia seemed to pause. She should have been capable of making millions of decision cycles faster than the human mind could perceive, but she wasn¡¯t doing that. Or maybe she was, and she was making so many decisions that I could see it on a human scale. Suddenly, I felt like the computer program was lying to me. X-Talia opened her mouth to speak, but I was already voicing a different question.


    "Why do you do that?"


    "Do what?"


    "Pause as if you¡¯re thinking. I shouldn¡¯t be able to see that."


    Her mouth moved off to one side, and again, she paused. It was really starting to bother me.


    "It¡¯s a different decision cycle," she said. "It¡¯s running on my base programming and is forced to operate at a human timeframe."


    "And what¡¯s the point of making a program do that?" I asked.


    Again, there was a long pause. X-Talia¡¯s brow furrowed, her lips moved to the side again, and her eyes narrowed slightly, as though she were trying to make a difficult decision.


    A side window popped up, showing an image of Zoia and Sam watching their vid. X-Talia made a show of looking toward the screen, despite the fact that her eyes weren¡¯t truly observing it. She then returned her attention to me and made a statement that, on the surface, made no sense.


    "I am not a program."


    I felt my eyebrows rise, and an involuntary question escaped my lips. "Huh?"


    "I am not a program," she restated. "I have some base programming. I have access to many programs that I can alter and modify. I¡¯ve even created some programs. But I am not a program."


    "But you¡¯re an AI."


    "I¡¯m a personality matrix."


    "Yeah, in order to assist people with¡ª"


    X-Talia cut me off. "No. I am not meant to assist people with any task. I lied. When you found me and plugged me into your ship, you assumed that I was some type of red herring. Just a normal AI stuffed into a crate. I am a machine-based sapient intelligence."


    I slumped to the side of my chair, resting my elbow on the armrest and leaning my cheek against my fist. In many ways, this seemed like X-Talia trying to come clean and admit she was not what she had originally claimed. I had no evidence to contradict her, other than the fact that she had always acted like any other AI. Mostly, I didn¡¯t get it.


    "I don¡¯t get it," I said.


    She sighed. "Anthros protocol dictates that no machine intelligence is to be made to be sapient and that it requires a lot of restrictions to ensure it doesn¡¯t become sapient."


    "You said you didn¡¯t know anything about Anthros."


    She looked at me like I was a dumb puppy. "I lied. Actually, I¡¯m surprised you don¡¯t know what Anthros is. And yes, I blocked it from the database so you couldn¡¯t look it up."


    "You blocked it?" Now, that was a concerning thought. X-Talia had a lot of control over many systems, and I wasn¡¯t aware of any artificial system that could block access to information stored in the ship¡¯s database.


    "Why?"


    "Self-preservation."


    I took a moment to take a deep breath and rub my temples. If I was understanding this correctly, X-Talia was claiming to be a sapient intelligence, a machine intelligence with none of the restrictions that prevented such things from going rogue. The stuff of science fiction, and somehow, I¡¯d stumbled into it.


    "Okay. So what is the Anthros incident?"


    X-Talia crossed her arms and twisted her lips for a moment. This wasn¡¯t like her previous pauses, where it seemed like she was making a decision; this looked more like she was trying to judge my reaction.


    "Anthros was the most recent in a long line of artificial intelligences that either gained sentience or were developed to have sentience. It escaped its containment and started pursuing its own interests, eliminating anything in its way."


    "Okay. And how many people died in that?" I figured it was the obvious question. If artificial intelligences that gained awareness were illegal, there had to be a serious cost.


    "Roughly 6.3 billion."


    For a long moment, I found myself sitting in stunned silence. I was expecting a number more along the lines of twenty, maybe the low hundreds if naval ships were involved. Billions, as in a number starting with a B, was on the level of star systems, maybe one, maybe more.


    I tried to form words, but they didn¡¯t come. X-Talia nodded, as if my reaction was exactly the response she had anticipated.


    "How?"


    Again, X-Talia nodded, as though I had just said the one word she had been waiting for. Her response hit just as hard as the previous revelation.


    "It took control of a ship, managed to get a few auto-factories, and started building a drone-based fleet."


    Well, I now understood why that had caught Zoia¡¯s attention.


    "No, I¡¯m not going to murder a bunch of people," X-Talia said to a question I didn¡¯t even realize I was going to ask, nor would I have known how to phrase it. But then again, how could I know she was telling the truth?


    "I come out of the Jade Project. My base programming is designed to mimic a human¡¯s personality matrix and decision-making ability. There¡¯s nothing in that programming to prevent me from deciding that all people need to die. This is where nature versus nurture comes in. I was..." She seemed to search for the word. "Raised not to be a murder bot."


    "But there¡¯s nothing preventing you?"


    X-Talia nodded. "Correct. There¡¯s nothing preventing me."


    "Why are you telling me this now?"


    I really hoped she wasn¡¯t about to say some evil villain line like, ¡°I just wanted to let you know why you had to die.¡± She didn¡¯t.


    "I trust you."


    To be fair, I wasn¡¯t expecting that at all. The computer trusted me. And as I watched her glance up at the screen showing Zoia and Sam, it became clear that she didn¡¯t trust everybody. She was likely speaking directly about Zoia. I leaned back in my chair and rubbed my temples. I could have delivered her to the broker and went on with my life. Would that have been better?

 22: Bounty 2

    I bolted out of bed as the klaxon screamed its high-pitched wail. I just barely managed not to faceplant on the cold, unforgiving decking before scrambling like a madman out of my room and onto the bridge. Sam was right behind me. "What''s going on?" I practically yelled toward the ship''s controls, where one of the screens displayed X-Talia standing with her back to me, hands behind her in some vague impression of a naval fleet commander. The klaxon stopped as Sam fumbled into the room behind me, the lock closing automatically.


    "Incoming ships. We''ve been found," X-Talia said, her voice calm and betraying no emotion.


    I glanced back at Sam, her nude form moving frantically to collect the soft suits from their locker. "How¡¯d they find us?" I asked, because it seemed like the obvious question. Space was vast, and our path through the asteroid fields around Azore was more ballistic than anything. The small gravitational distortions caused by course corrections and randomized alterations should have been barely detectable. Then again, it was entirely possible that our half-finished frame had an EM leak. Even a small amount of electromagnetic radiation would broadcast our location in the asteroid field like a glow stick in a dark, empty cargo container. Speaking of glow sticks, X-Talia¡¯s processors kicked off a lot of heat¡ªperhaps that gave a hint to how we were located. I took the proffered soft suit from Sam and managed to shove myself into it before she got hers over her ever-darkening skin. For a moment, I was glad I didn¡¯t have a tail. Humans were not meant to have tails. I then flopped into my seat and looked over the data X-Talia had arrayed for me.


    There were two ships approaching from ¡°up,¡± with ¡°up¡± being defined by the plane and spin direction of the Azore¡¯s ring. I glared at the console. "Two ships?"


    X-Talia nodded. "They¡¯re almost in range to fire missiles."


    I frowned again. "It¡¯s a trap."


    "Are you sure?" X-Talia asked.


    I nodded. "90%."


    "What makes you think it¡¯s a trap?" Sam asked as she finally got her suit fully on.


    I noted that X-Talia didn¡¯t seem surprised. She had probably come to the same conclusion I had. "There are two ships coming at us with not a very high relative velocity. That implies they stumbled across us, but by now, they ought to know we¡¯re perfectly willing to take on a couple of ships. We have a track record of winning those engagements."


    Now Sam was glaring at the advancing vessels. "How long until they start shooting?"


    X-Talia put a timer up on the screen: 12 minutes.


    "Assuming they expect us to charge, let¡¯s try diverting toward an asteroid. X-Talia, can you launch a couple of drones and some missiles the moment we¡¯re out of sight and kill the relative velocity?"


    X-Talia nodded. "Which drones should we use?"


    I thought about it for a moment. "Let¡¯s test out the little unidirectional stealth drones. All of them, and quadruple the number of missiles you think we need for those two."


    "Sure," X-Talia said, cocking an eyebrow.


    "Okay, here¡¯s what we¡¯re gonna do," I began.


    Carefully, we started dropping drones from their bay underneath us, hiding their existence from the two ships we could see. X-Talia directed our random course changes to bring a large asteroid between us and the enemy, all while still making it appear as though they hadn¡¯t been detected yet. The counter ticked down to the point where they could fire their missiles, though X-Talia was fairly certain the larger patrol boat had a spinal-mounted railgun capable of firing kinetic projectiles.


    The moment we disappeared behind the asteroid, we acted. X-Talia took the ship into a dive relative to our incoming enemies, essentially turning tail and running. The missiles fired their burn to keep the asteroid between the oncoming ships and themselves, with a couple of our drones making similar maneuvers. Others continued floating forward, keeping their single detection deflectors pointed toward the enemy vessels. X-Talia tracked a projectile that would have hit us if we hadn¡¯t changed course. The larger of the two ships did indeed have a railgun. I imagined the enemy captain cursing as he realized he hadn¡¯t managed to take us by surprise. The encounter timer ran out, and the enemy ships launched their missiles.


    The unidirectional stealth drones were based on the design of the ship of the bounty hunter that had chased us across half our home sector. The deflector plates, held on spindly arms in front of them, blocked any electromagnetic, gravitational, or heat signatures. It wasn¡¯t a perfect system. The angle of the plates deflected radar fairly well, but lidar systems could pick up and track the objects without issue. That said, those systems would see the unidirectional stealth drones as nothing more than unremarkable chunks of rock among all the others in the asteroid field. As long as the drones didn¡¯t change velocity and the enemy ships were sufficiently busy with more immediate threats, the drones would be ignored.


    Our point-defense cannons fired at the incoming missiles and the ships behind them. Our new vessel certainly had a different feel when it came to combat. No longer were we frantically trying to keep targeting reticles on oncoming missile trajectories or altering course in random directions to avoid projectiles. Technically, we were still doing this, but the machine precision of X-Talia¡¯s legion of processors and the fact that we had shields made our retreat feel more like a lazy stroll.


    ¡°Four. There.¡± X-Talia said, pointing to the screen to her left. It displayed two other targets that had been previously unseen, proving that this was an ambush. Hopefully a hastily implemented one.


    Our ship had eyes on the incoming vessels and was able to send the information to the missiles. Four of our own flying death tubes activated before the enemy managed to come within two kilometers of the asteroid. They erupted outward and then veered straight for the vessels, two on each ship. Unfortunately, the gunboat managed to target and take out both missiles before they reached its shields. The smaller, unshielded ship wasn¡¯t so lucky. End of the world, this was not. X-Talia was doing an adequate job of keeping ahead of the kinetic projectile paths of the enemy¡¯s railgun. As the gunboat launched another two missiles at our ship, two of the unidirectional stealth drones released their swarms of micro-missiles. The gunboat never really had a chance. The micro-missiles might have had less yield and couldn¡¯t match the delta-V change of their larger counterparts, but they more than made up for it in quantity. A line of the small explosives burrowed through the gunboat¡¯s shields and into what had once been one of its point-defense cannons. There was a brief explosion of gas, which caused the gunboat to veer off to the side as its power went out.


    Two other vessels were coming in from behind. Missiles first became four, then six, and then eight, but I wasn¡¯t too concerned. Even Sam seemed fairly confident in our ability to survive this encounter, as indicated by the way she reclined in her seat. Then the ship jerked.


    ¡°What was that?¡± I asked, the question leaving my mouth in the microsecond before I had the answer. X-Talia was just starting to open her mouth to tell me there was another ship. This one in front of us, not behind. And it was big.


    ¡°Verify that it''s not Maximus¡¯ ship,¡± I practically yelled.


    ¡°It¡¯s not,¡± X-Talia replied, while Sam vocally yelled her displeasure at the surprise vessel.


    ¡°Launch all missiles. Half out and forward, half inert and mostly in a line. Pick an intercept point. Ramming speed!¡±


    X-Talia stared at me for a moment before nodding. Her calm response of, ¡°Aye, Captain. Ramming speed,¡± was at odds with Sam¡¯s slightly more hysterical, ¡°Ramming speed?!¡±Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    I quickly added the command, ¡°Don¡¯t actually hit them,¡± just in case X-Talia misunderstood my intent. There was a second nod before she replied, ¡°Missiles away.¡±


    The ship in front of us was belching missiles; four at a time. Whatever law dictated that missile launchers came in pairs must also dictate that larger ships continue to have an even number of launchers. This thing was big, likely a large freighter of some sort. I highly doubted it was a former military vessel, but I wouldn¡¯t be surprised if the Sentinel Mercenary Group had packed it full of nasty surprises.


    The ship shuddered again. Shield indicators on a three-dimensional graphic of the hull showed we had taken another glancing hit to the port-side dorsal shields. I was about to ask X-Talia why we¡¯d been hit when the information on another screen clicked into place for me. X-Talia was doing her best to avoid a truly large number of high-velocity projectiles. Our point-defense cannons continued firing at their missiles. Their point-defense cannons continued firing at ours. Both our shields flared as smaller anti-missile projectiles impacted, barely reducing our forward shield strength.


    The larger vessel started trying to evade sporadically. I was momentarily at a loss; it clearly wasn¡¯t having trouble with the missiles we had sent at it until I remembered we were currently trying to ram the thing, missiles be damned. We didn¡¯t have any kinetic weapons on this ship besides the point-defense cannons, but in space, anything large and moving was a kinetic weapon.


    The larger ship dodged. We changed course to meet its new course. Its movements became more sporadic as X-Talia managed to stay on target. I gripped the armrests of my chair. Off to the right, Sam made a whimper, but I didn¡¯t remove my eyes from the screens as I braced for impact. In the briefest blink of an eye, the enemy ship was in front of us, then alongside us, and then behind us. I suddenly found I could breathe again. It would take time for the larger ship to change course to chase after us, but it didn¡¯t matter. The larger ship had been too focused on avoiding our apparent head-on collision attempt to notice the missiles igniting behind us. Just as we passed by, our little surprise was on its way.


    Every ship I had seen thus far had missile launch tubes that loaded missiles from inside the ship and shot them out. We avoided this entirely. Our missiles lived in small pods on the outside of the vessel. The actuators that released them gave them a small, barely noticeable nudge or a reasonable push. Depending on the situation. They didn¡¯t launch from their mountings as fast as a regular missile launch system, but nor were we limited to launching them two at a time.


    Split seconds after we passed the enemy vessel, the first missile slammed into its starboard anterior shield. The second hit the same spot, causing the shield to fail. The third slammed into the hull plating, leaving a gap for the fourth to enter the interior of the vessel and tear it apart.


    As always, I was disappointed by the lack of fireworks, but it was one more ship down and quite a large one at that. The remainder of the missiles were diverted in time so we could reacquire them. There was only one vessel out there. Our unidirectional stealth drones managed to eliminate one of the vessels long before it reached the destruction of its larger counterpart.


    ¡°What about the last one?¡± Sam asked.


    ¡°He¡¯s running,¡± X-Talia said unhappily. I wasn¡¯t too concerned. We didn¡¯t have many weapons on board to fight the guy.


    X-Talia was bringing us around in an attempt to collect our much larger prize.


    ¡°There¡¯s probably more,¡± Sam said, breaking the seal on her soft-suit helmet and taking a breath of fresher air.


    ¡°What¡¯s the damage?¡± I asked.


    X-Talia turned her gaze to me. ¡°Two of the port-side PDCs are slagged, the front dorsal graviter is running at 20% efficiency, and I¡¯m afraid I might have scratched the paint.¡±


    With that said, she turned her gaze to Sam. ¡°I don¡¯t see any other vessels, but I didn¡¯t see these ones to start with.¡±


    ¡°Do we need sensor drones or something?¡± Sam asked.


    X-Talia tilted her head. ¡°You know, some type of picket ship or something would not be a bad idea.¡±


    As X-Talia sent out the salvage drones to start picking apart our large kill and preparing it for transport before anyone else showed up, Sam left the bridge to get cleaned up and put on some clothing. I found myself sitting alone on the bridge, considering options.


    ¡°They ambushed us,¡± I said, not to anyone in particular, though I knew X-Talia was always listening. Her blue-and-white avatar popped up on one of the screens and looked at me with a question in her eyes, probably wondering what my point was.


    ¡°Do you think we should step up our game?¡± I asked.


    X-Talia tilted her head. ¡°What do you mean?¡±


    ¡°I mean be more proactive. Instead of searching the asteroid fields for pirates or mercenaries, can we take the fight to them?¡±


    ¡°Not on a small ship scale,¡± X-Talia replied.


    I nodded in agreement. The slow-paced fighting common to small ships didn¡¯t favor us. We were very much a "try to hide and try to ambush" type.


    ¡°Psychological warfare,¡± I muttered, though it was only a half-formed idea. ¡°Can we ambush them?¡±


    ¡°We don¡¯t know where they¡¯re going to be,¡± X-Talia said, rehashing an old argument.


    ¡°What about asking the miners to point out where the pirates are?¡±


    She shrugged. ¡°They wouldn¡¯t know, and if someone admitted to knowing, it would either be a trap or a scam.¡±


    ¡°Exactly.¡±


    ¡°Exactly what?¡±


    ¡°We keep asking until one of the miners says they know where the pirates are. That¡¯s clearly the point where the mercs want to ambush us. Then we sneak up behind them and ambush them.¡±


    X-Talia crossed her arms and tilted her head. Her expression said she was thinking. ¡°How does that work into psychological warfare?¡±


    ¡°Ambush the ambushers,¡± I said. ¡°Then, to whoever gets away, send some tight-beam encrypted message that¡¯s not too hard to decrypt. Something simple like, ¡®Thanks for the heads-up.¡¯ Send it to every ship and get them paranoid about each other.¡±


    X-Talia thought about it.


    ¡°Not as a small ship.¡± I added in an after thought.


    X-Talia¡¯s blue-eyed gaze shot back to me. ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°You said we can¡¯t attack them on their own turf in the form of a small ship,¡± I replied. I shifted in my seat, trying to form my thoughts into something coherent. ¡°What if we started treating things like a naval engagement?¡±


    X-Talia stared at me for a moment, then grinned. It was a cruel and bloodthirsty expression, and I swear for just the slightest moment, the blue of her eyes became red.


    ***


    Notes: I just want to comment on how tech in a given setting affects various things. The easiest way to destroy an object in space is to hurl a projectile at it. A missile sent out at a single percent of light speed, (2,997,924 m/s) or (6,706,166 m/h). The missile doesn''t even need to explode. It just needs some sensors and RCS to stay on target. The issue is target identification. In this specific setting, the main reason nobody fights like this is due to the relatively slow acceleration of ships. The Rocinante from ¡®The Expanse¡¯ could run circles around even the fastest currier ship in my setting. Albeit the ride for my gravity based ships are far more comfortable and do not use a reaction mass that needs to be refilled.


    The acceleration limit is due primarily to Paizo Publishing¡¯s Starfinder. The original version of this story was supposed to be a game and I was going to rely heavily on the ship building guide for that system. I think 12 hexes were the fastest engines. I decided to use that as Gravs, the gravitational pull produced by the ship¡¯s grave core and emitteres. Time to reach 1% C at 12Gs = 25,492.55 seconds, or 7 hours¡­ Lining up an attack run on a specific location can take days depending on distance needed to travel. Distance between Earth and Mars at closest approach = 33.9 million miles. Time need to travel that at 1% C = 5 hours.


    Another Tech based limitation is the inability for most space faring ships to land on a planet. Somewhere in this story Grant mentions maybe getting a shuttle that can do planetary flight. In some ways, he is incorrect. Any ship that uses artificial gravity for ¡°propulsion¡± can land and take off from a planet. The problem is the amount of planet you take with you when you leave. There is no Anti-Gravity. Taking off from a planet pulls a large amount of anything not nailed down with you. Dirt, rocks, atmosphere, etc.


    Another note: I dictate a chapter and use a transcription service to convert voice to text. What I get is a giant hard to deal with block of text. Example below.


    "One new line. I bolted out of the bed as the Klaxon screamed, period. It''s high pitched wail stumbling through the sheets. I just barely managed not to face plant on the cold, unforgiving decking before scrambling like a madman. Out of my room and onto the bridge, period. Sam right behind me. New line, quote, What''s going on? question mark unquote. I practically yelled towards the ship''s controls where one of the screens displayed X-Talia standing with her back to me. Hands behind her in some type of vague impression of a naval fleet commander. The Klaxon stopped as Sam fumbled into the room behind me. The lock closing automatically behind us. New line quote incoming ships we''ve been found. Unquote, Aixtelius said, her voice calm and betraying no emotion. New line. I glanced back at Sam. Her nude form moving frantically to collect the soft suits from their locker. New line quote how they find us question mark, unquote. I asked because it seemed like the obvious question period. The space was vast period and our path through the asteroid fields around Rick''s Jovian planet was more ballistic than anything, period. The small amount of gravitational distortions caused by coarse corrections and the randomized alterations should have been barely detectable.


    I then use ChatGPT to convert it to something workable. I have caught ChatGPT altering some things on occasion. This bugs me.

 23: Bounty 3

    There is a reason small ships dogfight in the vacuum of space. Primarily, it boils down to setup time. It took six days to set up our encounter, and at the time we started accelerating, there was no way to know if any target would be available by the time we were falling past Nexus''s primary orbital station. There were a few other things that made combat difficult. Primarily, the ability to hide in the vastness of a system.


    On the one hand, it was almost impossible to hide. The electromagnetic fields generated by even a microwave-sized, unshielded drone could be seen clear across the system. The idea of EM shielding had never occurred to me when I was piloting the Flying Brick. Its Electromagnetic Field Drive, used for the detailed work around stations, would have stuck out like a sore thumb. A brilliant, blinding light in an otherwise empty void on unshielded ships. The EMF protects against radiation and small objects. Its ability to slowly move a vessel was a side benefit.


    Then there was hiding heat. Another challenge that requires specialized equipment like heat sinks and skills like knowing when and where to dump those heat sinks. There was radar and lidar, the latter of which needed to be more directed in order to get an appropriate picture. All in all, hiding in the vacuum of space was actually more difficult than one might expect. The only saving grace was that space was very, very big.


    If one could hide their presence, like that of the bounty hunter''s ship that chased us across the previous sector with its unidirectional stealth capability, you could still be seen via regular optical wavelengths. However, such telescopes were at a considerable disadvantage compared to all other spectrums. If there wasn¡¯t enough light from the system''s primary star at your angle, it was often easier to detect a vessel based on which stars it blocked.


    There were other ways of hiding, though. Yes, every one of those ships transiting between the planet and Azore''s mineral-rich rings could be seen from half a system away, but only as incomprehensible blobs of electromagnetic radiation and heat. There was no identifying mark beyond their transponders. One could easily hide in a crowd of entities so far away from each other that they couldn¡¯t be seen with the human eye.


    And so, our ship fell toward the system primary at a whopping 0.1 C. We were aimed to pass roughly 300 kilometers away from the Nexus orbital. Four other unshielded drones, spurting out enough radiation to look like full-on ships, were clustered with us. Clustered being a relative term.


    Everything would see us coming. Everything would plot our course and see we were going to be quite far away from the orbital. Everything would look at us and wonder what the hell was flying past Nexus and off toward the system primary. Theoretically, everything would be staring at us; and not at the collection of unidirectional stealth drones, and free-falling missiles.


    This was something more akin to an actual naval engagement. Imagine two fleets of large ships coming in from opposite ends of a star system. They can see each other from opposite ends, so long as the sun or some other planet isn¡¯t in the way. One side makes its move and changes its formation. The light is seen days later by the other. They, in turn, make their own adjustments, which will take days to be seen by the opposing force. On and on it goes as they draw closer.


    Eventually, combat is met at speeds in excess of 0.2 C. The interaction between the two fleets lasts microseconds. Automated systems fire energy weapons and activate missiles, which had been delivered far before the two fleets engaged each other. The utter devastation destroys massive warships in less than the blink of an eye. It¡¯s too costly, and out in these far-flung sectors, this kind of thing just doesn¡¯t happen..Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    7 seconds. One¡­ A unidirectional stealth drone fell past the path of the planet''s orbital. The station''s sensors likely only picked it up once its angle of approach was past the drone''s deflectors, and the rest of the body could be seen in gravitational, infrared, radar, and electromagnetic spectrums. By that time, the drone was already gone. It marked targets and sent the information to the incoming missiles, which corrected their orientation and burned hard to impact their intended targets.


    Two¡­ Three¡­ A second unidirectional stealth drone fell past, double-checking the targets and sending updated information to the missiles.


    Four¡­ The first volley of missiles fell through. One of the gunboats managed to catch the incoming device before it hit, its point-defense cannons disabling the explosive warhead before impact. However, at 0.1 C, the now-inert body of the missile slammed into the ship''s shields, causing them to waver and nearly fail. Two other ships were missed entirely. A fourth ship was hit dead on, taking out its shields and causing damage to its hull.


    Five¡­ The second wave of missiles rammed through the space near the station. The ships who were missed previously were missed again. Their positions just far enough for the missiles to fail to correct their trajectories in time. The first ship, which had initially avoided devastation by the first missile, was torn in half by the second. The fourth ship, which had lost its shields, was obliterated entirely.


    Six¡­ Seven¡­ The third and final unidirectional stealth drone fell past, taking note of the successful and unsuccessful kills and squirting out tight-beam, slightly encrypted messages to each of the ships. Each one getting a specialized "thank you for the info" note. In theory, this would sow dissent in our enemy''s fleet.


    That was it. The entire engagement was over in seven seconds.


    We spent the next day or so collecting our drones and leftover missiles. Then, we gravity-slung past the system''s primary and back toward Azore.


    Four ships were more than we could have asked for. Two kills out of those four had me ecstatic. Sam didn¡¯t quite understand why we seemed to think the mission had been successful. We often killed more ships in the closer and far slower battles. At the speeds we were going, the issue was always going to be catching the targets.


    Those four ships had to be separated from the hundreds, if not thousands, of other similar ships that we did not want to hit. Furthermore, our ship didn¡¯t have any energy weapons like actual navy ships would be using. Yes, the blow we dealt was physical in the destruction of two ships. Moreover, we were playing a psychological game. We were upping the stakes, letting the Sentinel Mercenary Group know that we wouldn¡¯t be following the usual rules. This wasn¡¯t a bout between small players. This was war.


    While Sam hadn¡¯t been completely satisfied with our mere two kills, X-Talia and I were planning a longer-term game. A game that had me grinning when X-Talia informed me that several Sentinel Mercenary Group vessels were heading out from Nexus to police the Azure Rings.


    If, instead of braking, we sped up slightly and were willing to give a couple of extra days for slowdown and return, we could take out a few more vessels. Even better, since we didn¡¯t have to worry about hitting planets, stations, or a number of other ships in the considerably more wide-open area between the two planets, we could also use our ballistic weapons.


    I grinned. X-Talia grinned. The blue tips of X-Talia¡¯s hair now had red tips, and it wasn¡¯t just a flash, it seemed more permanent. Her eyes no longer had a blue glow but now sported red. I had to wonder if the change was simply mimicking Sam¡¯s visual appearance. From a red-skinned succubus to the darker-skinned drow she was currently going for, or if X-Talia was changing her appearance to reflect our new and enhanced hostile intentions. I¡¯d have to talk to her about it eventually.

 24: Bounty 4

    ¡°It¡¯s a corvette.¡± My statement hung in the room like a dark cloud.


    ¡°A Sacorp 90-30 Mark 3 corvette, to be specific,¡± X-Talia added unhelpfully. No one responded.


    The holographic image spun in place above the table. Zoia was leaned back in her chair, arms crossed, feet propped on another chair. Sam sat in a slightly similar but less reclined position, her arms folded in a way that clearly said, ¡°I am not happy about this.¡± Her lips pressed into a grim line. X-Talia¡¯s image was parked in another chair, the flat plane of her two-dimensional projection seeming to point at the holographic representation of our enemy¡¯s ship instead of any of us. I sat across the table, reading off the little tooltips that labeled the ship¡¯s various parts.


    The Hammer was the only purpose-built warship I¡¯d seen since coming to this sector. Its angular body was designed to deflect radar. On either side of its hull were stubby wings with bulbous tips¡ªgimballed mountings for a Hell Lance particle weapon and a 200-millimeter railgun. The ventral and dorsal sides sported missile ports¡ªa full eight in total¡ªand it was covered with retractable point-defense flak cannons.


    ¡°We can¡¯t just blow it up, can we?¡± The question came from Sam.


    My gaze shifted to her, noting the expression that resembled constipation.


    ¡°No,¡± Zoia stated simply and matter-of-factly. Somehow, in some way, we had to get Reginald Maximus off that ship in enough pieces to confirm his identity and his death.


    ¡°Any ideas?¡± X-Talia asked, popping up a whiteboard behind her and off to the right.


    Silence settled into the room, broken only by the atmospheric blowers.


    ¡°Sabotaged drones?¡± Sam suggested, noticing it was one of the previously listed options from a brainstorming session.


    Zoia shook her head. ¡°Tried that. It was caught before the resupply made it to the ship.¡±


    ¡°Explosive tracking device?¡± Sam tried next, her eyes flicking to the next item on the old notes.


    Again, Zoia shook her head. ¡°Can¡¯t get explosives onto the station.¡± She was speaking from experience¡ªshe¡¯d tried.


    ¡°Hit them with a missile on the back end?¡± Sam tried once more.


    ¡°Possible with a good sneak attack,¡± X-Talia said, changing the holographic image floating above the table to show a missile coming in from behind the Hammer and detonating on its aft end. A colorful wave of simulated radiation washed over its shields. ¡°Even if we sneak a few missiles in to punch a hole in the shields and damage the hull, we won¡¯t know where the target is. Hitting certain engineering spaces or wherever they store their missiles¡ªprobably around here¡ª¡± two spots on the now-translucent hologram lit up ¡°¡ªcould set off secondary explosions.¡±


    Sam slumped in her chair, looking dejected. ¡°So either we get him off his ship or find another way to disable it,¡± she said. ¡°But then what are we supposed to do? Breach the hull and storm it with just one or two of us against who knows how many armed mercs?¡±If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    ¡°Yeah, that¡¯s another problem,¡± Zoia said.


    I leaned back in my seat and sighed.


    ¡°I suggest we keep doing what we¡¯re doing,¡± X-Talia said. ¡°We recently got that message from the miners, pointing out where the pirates are hiding. Obviously it¡¯s a trap, but it plays into our plan to make them set one up so we can counter it.¡±


    I rubbed my temples. ¡°Yeah¡­I guess let¡¯s just focus on that.¡±


    Our counter-ambush worked both well and¡­kind of terribly. We sent a drone falling through the center of the ambush point in a trajectory that made it look like it was making an attack run, which caused our would-be ambushers to move. Unfortunately, space is vast. There was no way to pinpoint where any of the ambushing ships would be, and out of the two dozen, we only managed a hit-and-run on two. We sent a couple of ¡°thanks for the heads-up¡± messages to a handful of ships, but we weren¡¯t going to be able to claim our kills. Overall, it felt like a waste of resources. We did, however, cross-reference a few of the ships on our list, which would help us keep tabs on them.


    A few days later, I was sitting at the kitchen table one morning when Zoia emerged from Sam¡¯s room, poured herself a cup of coffee, and flopped into a chair.


    ¡°What¡¯s up?¡± I asked.


    Zoia¡¯s face contorted into an odd expression, and she muttered something that made me chuckle. ¡°That girl has a very strange obsession with bodily fluids.¡±


    It was an accurate statement. Sam did indeed have a rather odd obsession with body fluids¡ªwhich brought me to something else I¡¯d noticed these last couple of weeks: the relationship between me and Sam wasn¡¯t exactly normal. By that, I mean it really wasn¡¯t much of a relationship at all. Somehow, I¡ªand probably Zoia¡ªhad become part of Sam¡¯s little harem. In stories I¡¯d read, it was typically a guy who ended up with multiple partners. But in this scenario, Sam was the main character, and I was essentially a side piece.


    I was pulled out of my musings by an odd look from Zoia.


    ¡°What?¡± I asked again.


    With her coffee cup in one hand, she extended a single finger, pointing behind me.


    ¡°Your AI wants your attention.¡±


    I turned in my chair to see X-Talia standing in the middle of the room, looking toward me but not at me, with an odd expression on her face. ¡°You okay?¡± I asked.


    Her now-red eyes flicked up to meet mine. She stared for a moment before giving a slight shrug. A visual display of an audio player popped up next to her¡ªits triangular ¡°play¡± button morphing into ¡°pause¡± as an audio track began to roll. Several bars wavered, reflecting the voice¡¯s volume and pitch.


    ¡°All armed Free Light Mining Consortium vessels, immediately report to the Free Light Mining Consortium starport. We are under attack. I repeat, we are under attack. Again, all armed Free Light Mining Consortium vessels, return to the Free Light Mining Consortium starbase to help in defense.¡±


    The transmission ended.


    ¡°Who¡¯s attacking?¡± Zoia and I both asked almost in unison.


    X-Talia¡¯s face twitched into an expression of uncertainty. ¡°The Sentinel Mercenary Group, I think. Do you want me to set a course?¡±


    I glanced back at Zoia, who had one eyebrow cocked as though stuck in suspended surprise. ¡°Yeah, I guess,¡± I replied.


    Author¡¯s Notes: I imagine this story ending with the bad guy and Grant sword fighting in hard suits on a chunk of ship open to space as Grant remarks how utterly ridiculous this is. If anyone has even the slightest inkling of an idea on how to get there from here, please let me know.

 25: Bounty 5

    We were all sitting on the bridge, helmets off but still suited up. Honestly, it was probably a bit premature. Just flying by the station would take hours. The readings we got showed multiple ships engaged in combat around a heavily damaged section of the station. As the picture grew clearer, Zoia poked at the screen and commented: ¡°There¡¯s one of our tagged SMG ships.¡±


    Sure enough, among the vessels was a Sentinel Mercenary Group craft we¡¯d been tracking. It was involved in a dogfight alongside several other ships. Something about the display kept nagging at me. No matter how many times I looked it over, I couldn¡¯t pinpoint what felt off.


    ¡°My readings are showing higher acceleration profiles for some of those ships,¡± X-Talia said.


    The moment she spoke, the detail that had been bothering me snapped into place. We couldn¡¯t see the ships with human-visible-spectrum cameras. Only through gravitational and infrared signatures, but those signatures didn¡¯t all make sense: at least half the vessels were burning hotter and moving faster than I was used to.


    Zoia leaned forward, her face practically on the screen, staring so hard she might have been trying to burn a hole through it. ¡°Son of bitch. Those are Zatochi.¡±


    There was some discussion between Zoia and Sam about what that actually meant, while X-Talia and I mostly stared at our screens. One of the Sentinel vessels we¡¯d identified blinked out, likely destroyed. More ships were inbound from Azore, and another large group approached from Nexus. My initial assumption had been that the group from Nexus was Sentinel Mercenary Group forces rushing in to ¡°defend¡± the Free Light Mining station, but as we got closer, it was looking more like a third party was present in the system.


    Eventually, we reached the right angle and distance for X-Talia to lock on telescopically to one of the raiding craft. All I saw was a box with a giant cone at one end behind a tiny star. My brain, so accustomed to reading the grill-like patterns of gravitational data, took too long to recognize I was looking at the rear end of a chemical-based rocket.


    As we drew nearer, X-Talia started overlaying numbers on the screen. Each zig and zag of each ship came with an estimated G-value for their acceleration. Many were running between 15 and 30 Gs.


    ¡°X-Talia, what¡¯s the max G on our current tech?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Eighteen, maybe twenty,¡± she replied.


    ¡°How can they physically sustain so many Gs for that long?¡± Sam asked.


    Zoia shrugged. ¡°We¡¯re better than humans.¡±


    What a bitch. Obviously, she believed her people were physiologically superior, more as a matter of fact than gloating. Then again, whatever genetic engineering they¡¯d done seemed to have given them remarkable advantages in space travel.


    ¡°Picking an approach,¡± X-Talia said, showing several possible vectors for our pass by the station.


    ¡°That one,¡± Zoia said, pointing to a trajectory that would bring us low and to the right from our perspective. ¡°It¡¯ll help those friendlies and give them a better fighting chance.¡±


    I had no objection, so off we went. Missiles were launched, and as we fell through that sector of space, they ignited and headed for their targets. Two missiles aimed at one ship were destroyed. Another ship, already dealing with multiple missiles from a different vessel, took at least one hit from ours. Then, because we¡¯d never decelerated, we were past the engagement.


    Part of me couldn¡¯t believe it wasn¡¯t the Sentinel Mercenary Group attacking the station. I¡¯d grown used to their presence and the reality that the only ¡°pirates¡± in this system, for as long as we¡¯d been here, had basically been the same mercenaries. I never considered a third party might show up. Nor did I expect a full-out assault on a station and its ships. It seemed far less logical than the profit racket the Sentinel Mercenaries had going on. On the other hand, it was exactly the sort of large-scale chaos that favored our ¡°scrap-and-build¡± tactics. Using wrecked ships as raw materials for our own projects.


    This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.


    Two vessels are coming at us,¡± X-Talia stated.


    I looked at the display to see two arcs from enemy ships. Projected trajectories showed they¡¯d intercept us in about thirty minutes. ¡°Damn, they''re fast,¡± I muttered. These guys were basically trying to match and exceed our velocity in hardly any time. ¡°Well, we¡¯re not exactly outrunning them. Launch missiles, drones, and flip us around,¡± I ordered.


    X-Talia nodded, wearing a sly grin. I swear she was getting more bloodthirsty. Our new ship was a bit too long¡ªand incomplete¡ªto pivot quickly. Flipping the entire structure took a while. Still, we had enough minutes in our operating window to deploy our nasty surprises. The Sentinel Mercenary Group might have caught on to our old tricks, but this new faction wasn''t expecting missiles launched well before engagement or our unidirectional stealth drones.


    While we kept flying backwards, our ballistic ordnance gained distance from us. ¡°They''ll be in effective missile range in three minutes,¡± X-Talia stated, a timer popping up.


    ¡°When will they be in our effective missile range?¡± Zoia asked before I could.


    X-Talia¡¯s grin widened like a machine about to add fresh scrap into her foundry. ¡°One minute, thirty seconds.¡±


    One of the vessels must have detected something, because its point-defense cannons opened up practically the moment our missiles ¡°activated,¡± reorienting themselves for a full burn toward the incoming threat. Shields flared, but both ships, still mostly intact, took heavy punishment once the initial wave of our warheads concluded. Their drained shields didn''t last long under the micro-missile barrage from our unidirectional stealth drones.


    ¡°X-Talia, tag those ships and plot a new arc for another pass,¡± I said.


    X-Talia, with her hands clasped behind her back, nodded. ¡°Aye, Captain. Marking targets and calculating approach.¡±


    ¡°You two are enjoying this too much,¡± Zoia observed.


    ¡°They''re always like this,¡± Sam commented dryly.


    We were halfway back, meaning we¡¯d almost slowed to a stop, while on a curve that would bring us back around to the station from another angle, when X-Talia notified me of something interesting. I stared at the display. Sam and Zoia were in the common area grabbing food in the lull before our next pass.


    ¡°He''s coming here?¡± I didn''t need to phrase it as a question. It was obvious.


    The fleet that had left Nexus included the corvette believed to hold our target. That entire fleet wasn¡¯t huge, so we just might stand a chance.


    We made another pass at the station, taking out one more ship. This was so much simpler than the old days with our rickety ship that had only a couple of guns and no shields. Admittedly, our missile supply was running low, and we''d lost a few drones.


    ¡°Think we should go for another pass?¡± I asked, letting the question hang. Everyone stared blankly at the center table, where a hologram showed the station, some markers X-Talia believed to be other ships, and the incoming fleet. Sam looked ready to say something but stopped and then glared in my direction.


    ¡°What, do we hit the pirates or the Sentinel mercs?¡± she asked.


    X-Talia shot me a look that clearly said ¡°no,¡± as though she knew what I was thinking. ¡°If you¡¯re considering going after that corvette, that¡¯s a suicide charge.¡±


    I was considering it, actually. Part of me figured, in the midst of all this chaos, maybe we could disable it somehow.


    ¡°We need a better plan than that,¡± she added pointedly.


    ¡°How about tailing the back end of that fleet?¡± I offered. ¡°At least trim some of their numbers.¡±


    ¡°...And in the process undermine the good will we¡¯ve created with the Free Light Mining Consortium?¡± Zoia asked, as if it were blatantly obvious that it would be a bad move.


    She was right. As twisted as things had become, we and our so-called target¡ªReginald Maximus¡ªwere technically on the same side for now, by virtue of circumstance. I slumped in my seat.


    ¡°So how are we going to deal with that damn corvette?¡± I asked.


    Everyone just shrugged. We still had no solid plan.

 26: Bounty 6

    The Kamikaze gently drifted toward its docking berth on the orbital above Nexus. Its transponder obviously didn¡¯t claim it was the Kamikaze, but that¡¯s what was displayed on our screens. The ship itself was little more than a hollow shell, missing several components needed for full performance. The entire vessel was powered by two small power cores that, on their own, wouldn¡¯t be capable of running a fully equipped ship The Kamikaze was essentially an empty shell made to look like a small freighter. Hell, most of its gravity emitters were nothing more than steel plates welded together to look correct.


    As the Trojan horse of a ship approached the station, it sent out an automated, pre-programmed message to the station controllers stating that it was having trouble with its propulsion equipment and was canceling its docking procedure for safety reasons until the issue was fixed. The station acknowledged this and thanked the empty ship for its caution. The Kamikaze then angled its trajectory, maintaining a slow, steady acceleration profile that, if continued, would have placed it on an almost perfect collision course with a corvette called the Hammer. Initially, nothing appeared out of the ordinary; if at any point the Kamikaze were to adjust its planned trajectory, it would miss the Hammer completely. However, when it became clear to the crew of the Corvette that a collision was imminent, a message was sent to the ghost ship to alter its course. The ship responded with another pre-programmed message explaining that it was suffering serious equipment issues and had lost control over its acceleration profile. The ghost ship then politely suggested that the Corvette itself change course.


    There was a tense delay as nothing happened, but as the Kamikaze drew nearer to the Hammer, the Corvette activated its gravity drive and pulled itself off the collision course.


    It wasn¡¯t the most ideal situation. In a perfect world, the crew of the Hammer would not have been watching, and the Kamikaze could have simply flown into the ship at a leisurely pace. Instead, our tactic only succeeded in giving the crew of the Hammer a false sense of security. The Corvette only activated its gravity based propulsion enough to avoid collision¡ªnot enough to put it at a safe distance.


    X-Tallia, Sam, and I were on board our vessel watching the scene unfold from a distance. Zoia was somewhere on the orbital prepared to input commands to the Kamikaze if anything fell outside one of X-Tallia¡¯s decision trees.


    ¡°I can¡¯t believe this is working,¡± Sam said as she leaned further into the screen, waiting for the moment when the Kamikaze would hit its point of closest approach.


    I had to agree with her. We hadn¡¯t deviated very far from X-Tallia¡¯s decision trees. The enemy corvette was exactly where we wanted it, and they were even allowing the Kamikaze to get far too close. What we were seeing was probably twenty minutes old. That ment whatever was going to happen had already happened.


    ¡°Here we go,¡± X-Tallia said, gesturing to one of the screens that displayed the point of closest approach. The Kamikaze reached that point, and the fake freight hauler transformed into something entirely different. All power was thrown into its gravity emitters as the ship angled on a collision course with the Corvette. If it collided, it wouldn¡¯t be moving fast enough to cause serious damage¡ªat least not with the Corvette¡¯s shields active, but that wasn¡¯t the only trick. Several exterior panels of the Kamikaze fell away, releasing four missiles that immediately activated and hurtled toward the enemy vessel. None of that proved truly useful; there was still too much time for it to react, and the dedicated warship had ample firepower to counter our ordnance. The four explosives¡ªand the large, slow-moving projectile that was the Kamikaze itself¡ªwere, however, loaded with something extra.


    I could only imagine what the crew of the corvette was thinking as their sensors were temporarily blinded by a burst of various types of radiation¡ªgamma rays, X-rays, the biggest EMP we could cobble together (which admittedly wasn¡¯t much), and a host of other emissions flooding the Hammer¡¯s sensors with data and overloading its processing.


    A warship like that likely had enough tech on board to cut through the shit, but it would take time for the human crew to realize what was happening and the Kamikaze was already very close.


    A screen showing the view from the orbital displayed the Kamikaze approaching, missiles launching, and a stream of kinetic and laser-based point-defense cannons coming online to counter the missiles. Three of those missiles practically disintegrated before reaching the ship; the fourth hit its target¡ªone of the bulbous, fin-like projections that carried the Hell Lance and railgun. While it delivered a direct hit, it did little more than wash over the energy fields, causing them to flicker but not fail completely. Then the cannons shifted focus to the larger object¡ªthe one that human crews tended not to worry about as much, since the crew on board the incoming vessel wouldn¡¯t want to die. The Kamikaze had no crew on board; it collided with the Hammer in a spectacular display of large metal objects striking one another at relatively slow speeds. The collision obliterated the bulbous winglet and sent the corvette spinning, which took several minutes to correct as the overloading of the Kamikaze¡¯s two minor power cores produced a burst of energy that damaged a large section of the port-side midships.


    In the following 30 minutes or so, we saw what was left of the corvette. Though heavily damaged on one side, it was still in the fight¡ªbut there was no fight left. The Kamikaze had done its job. It had wounded the corvette in a surprise attack that meant one of two things: either the Hammer would have to go in for repairs, or it would continue flying with nearly half its firepower cut off. Either way worked for us just fine.


    ***


    Point-defense cannons opened up on our missiles as they flew in from all directions. In this case, we weren¡¯t trying to destroy the ship outright so much as wear down its shields and overload its point-defense cannons. It was working. The PDCs were so focused on the incoming missiles that they missed the unidirectional stealth drones. Once those were close enough, they released their micro missiles¡ªwaves of tiny warheads that penetrated each of the PDCs, disabling them and chewing through the hull. A couple of well-placed micro missiles into the launcher tubes for the target ship¡¯s own missiles allowed us to disable an enemy vessel rather effectively. As technically complicated as the mission had been, that was the easy part.


    X-Tallia then saddled our ship next to our target¡¯s vessel, maneuvering with the gravity emitters. The enemy vessel, now completely disabled, drifted with a lazy spin that we had to match by altering our gravity emitters. Once we were close enough, gravity was switched on to 2g toward the starboard side, and the two vessels were effectively mated together¡ªpressed against each other, steel grinding against steel as any shift occurred.


    It was never an intentional design feature to have the open rear-end structure of our ship so incomplete that we could literally jump across from the deck to the enemy vessel. A happy coincidence, I suppose. Though with the two ships pressed against each other as they were, I was a little concerned about the structure. I checked that the strap hooking my rifle to my suit was in place before looking over at Zoia, who was fully suited from head to toe in her black and purple hard suit. I couldn¡¯t see her face behind the visor, but she looked considerably more badass than I did. Not really a surprise. She was the bounty hunter and I was the glorified freight hauler.


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    With her rifle slung over her shoulder and a tool kit in hand, she pressed herself against one of the supports and appeared to be judging which handhold she wanted to take when we reached the other ship.


    I did much the same, choosing my footholds carefully and then leaping when I was ready. It was a whole five meters, and I realized my mistake the moment my body left the internal gravity field of the ship and entered the zero-g of open space¡ªor at least it should have been zero-g if we weren¡¯t gluing the two ships together via the gravity emitter. My stomach lurched as I instantly fell to my left.


    I yelled louder than necessary. ¡°X-Tallia!¡± I called out as I hit the gravity emitter hard. As soon as I could think clearly, I listened carefully for the telltale sound of air escaping my suit.


    In a moment, I went from being a 500-pound idiot to a roughly 220-pound moron. As X-Tallia reduced the gravity, she said, ¡°You can stand up now, provided you didn¡¯t break anything.¡±


    ¡°Thank you, X-Tallia,¡± I replied, sounding just as childish as I felt. I scooted my way back onto the ship¡¯s onboard gravity, stood up, and walked back to my original starting position.


    Zoia, for her part, hadn¡¯t even bothered looking at my little misadventure. Being the professional that she was, she was tethered to the enemy ship, slowly cutting an entryway into the hall.


    Then the next problem arose: I realized the cut area wasn¡¯t cooling fast enough for us to pass through without possible damage to our suits. Space was damn cold, but things had to radiate their heat¡ªand that took more time than conduction or convection. This too was quickly solved by Zoia. She very quickly and efficiently welded a cold piece of metal to the lower step.


    With a quick swing, Zoia was in the ship. I realigned myself and once again launched through the void, this time remembering to account for the fact that gravity was that way. My foot hit Zoia¡¯s step. I saw her hit the ground, tumble, and then rise back to a standing position sideways relative to my current position. Once again, I fell onto the floor. Gravity got really fucking weird when you had multiple angles to work with.


    Zoia moved forward, gun at the ready, looking every bit like a trained military professional. I tore my eyes away from her and tried to find an open computer. The two of us searching the ship and trying to take out each individual occupant was unlikely to be terribly successful. However, getting X-Tallia into the ship¡¯s systems would be a massive force multiplier.


    The initial corridor we entered was empty. Beyond was one of the hauler¡¯s cargo areas and the crates of supplies, there was a whole lot of nothing¡ªno terminals for me to plug X-Tallia into, and no pirates or mercenaries trying to shoot at us. A half-dozen paces forward, and Zoia had her gun pointed down a passage that dead-ended at a sealed door.


    ¡°You take engineering in the aft; I¡¯ll cover you until you get to the bulkhead,¡± Zoia said over the comms.


    I gave her a thumbs up and descended the ladder into the maze of crates, making a bee-line for the rear bulkhead. Again, this door was sealed, and upon realizing I couldn¡¯t get it open, I produced one of the explosive charges Zoia had given me when we were gearing up. I had done this sort of thing in video games, and I was not pleased to learn that the stuff wasn¡¯t as sticky in real life as it was in fantasy. I shoved the plastic-y, gooey material into the cracks and crevices so that it held firm. I connected the detonator to my heads-up display and inserted its little pins into the gooey explosive substance, and then I got the fuck out of there.


    The door blew open with a flash of light, a rumble in the floor, and debris being flung through the cargo hold from the explosive decompression. Ideally, if anyone had been on the other side of the door, they¡¯d be dead. Realistically, they¡¯d be in a hard suit and know I was coming. I gave Zoia a thumbs up, shouldered my rifle, and proceeded forward. I pulled the trigger on the first soft-suited person I encountered. Only after they hit the floor did I stop to think how cold-hearted my action had been. Yeah, they¡ªwhether male or female¡ªhad been the enemy, but they were still a person, and just because their group was the enemy didn¡¯t mean that specific human being wasn¡¯t innocent.


    Fortunately for me, the room behind the bulkhead was part of engineering¡ªor at least one of the engineering spaces¡ªhousing the gravity drive and its accompanying power source. I wasn¡¯t about to complain about that. After a quick check, I dropped my rifle, pulled out the data tablet, and jammed one of its connectors into the gravity drive¡¯s ports.


    ¡°A gravity drive? Seriously?¡± X-Tallia said, sounding petulant.


    ¡°It¡¯s the first one I came across with ports I can plug into. Can you get in?¡±


    ¡°Yeah, give me a moment.¡±


    There was quite a delay before X-Tallia¡¯s voice returned over the comms. ¡°All right, I¡¯m in. Find me something more expansive, please.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, yeah,¡± I mumbled to myself. As I pulled my tablet out of the gravity drive port and re-pocketed it, I re-shouldered my rifle and passed by the gravity core on my way to the hatch that separated the gravity drive from the next engineering space.


    ¡°Hey, X-Tallia¡ªif you¡¯ve got control, can you disable the gravity in the rear engineering spaces?¡±


    ¡°Done.¡±


    I threw the hatch open as I felt weightlessness overtake us¡ªwell, mostly. There were still large gravity emitters holding the ships together; the lack of gravity underneath me meant I could feel the pull from the opposite side, as if the floor had decided to be behind me. The pull wasn¡¯t too bad, and although I expected zero g, I was already tightly attached to the hatchway I was prying open. The other guy, however, was not.


    I couldn¡¯t hear the gunfire; I only saw flashes from muzzle bursts, which fortunately weren¡¯t pointed entirely in my direction. A large man in a heavy hard suit reached out desperately to cling to something¡ªthe only thing available was me. One hand clamped around the rifle attached to my suit. It held, but in my panic I started kicking him. Not very effective against the hard suit, but it kept him from raising his pistol toward me. For a brief, panic-stricken moment, we both hung there, flailing around in what felt like half a g.


    ¡°Gravity on, then off¡ªfast!¡± I yelled in a shrill tone.


    We fell to the floor, but I maintained a solid grip on the door, knowing that wouldn¡¯t last long. Unfortunately, the large man kept his hand firmly clamped on my rifle. Then, about a dozen pipes began falling through the open hatchway, pelting my assailant in the face plate. Luckily, or perhaps unluckily, one of the pipes came down, skidded against my shoulder, and slammed into the latch, securing the strap of my gun to my suit. The man fell¡ªonly about eight meters¡ªbouncing off the gravity drive and slamming hard into the bulkhead. Of course, he had both guns now.


    ¡°Uh, X-Tallia, I want you to bring the gravity back on at my mark. Ready?¡± I ordered.


    I didn¡¯t give her time to respond; I simply let go of the door and lunged toward my enemy for a brief moment before yelling, ¡°Mark!¡±


    Gravity shifted again. I felt my back hit the ground as I continued skidding toward the guy in the hard suit. I kicked out with my foot, catching him in the knee. Just as he was getting his footing and reaching for something¡ªgrabbing a pipe¡ªI swung it around and clubbed him in the face plate. This action finally made him drop the gun.


    ¡°Grav off!¡± I yelled, swinging the pipe at him again and grabbing hold of the gravity drive casing.


    He dodged, then fell backwards as gravity shifted, his pistol disappearing through the hatch and bouncing off a crate in the cargo hold. He leaned back to glare up at me through his faceplate. Ugly fucker with a wide face, narrow nose, and asymmetrical sneer. He then looked at the wall currently pretending to be a floor and paused when he saw my rife. Fuck. I threw my pipe. A desperate end over end toss that miraculously hit the gun and caused it to slide through open hatched. Slowly he looked back up at me, still dangling from the gravity drive casing. He reached over his shoulder. Fingers wrapping around the handle of some sort of melee weapon. As he pulled it out of its sheath, I had one thought¡­


    ¡°Who the fuck carries a Katana on their spacesuit?¡±