by M. D. Cooper
Sean sat in her chair, waking up the console. She fished out the data sliver and slotted it in. The Promise, no stranger to illegally acquired data, gave the sliver a look-over, flensing away the expected viruses and other crap people seemed to burden their information with.
After a couple of seconds, her console chimed. Sean brought up the contents, giving it a skim.
“Holy shit,” she said, doing a double take. She leaned forward. “Holy. Shit.” What she’d found was valuable. Very, very valuable.
Sean smiled. Wolf Turu or no, this trip was going to be very profitable. She tried to ignore the nagging fragment of conscience that said, And all it cost was you leaving a guy to the mercy of the OFA.
It was a hard universe, and there were winners and losers. That was all.
* * * * *
“What am I looking at?” Luke asked while attempting an epic slouch in the pilot’s chair.
Kiyoshi shook his head in disgust. “I can’t believe you’re qualified to pilot a starship.”
“I can’t believe you’re qualified to be a human being,” Luke shot back, then saw the murderous look in Kiyoshi’s eye. “Don’t hit me. Remember. You can’t fly for shit. And I fly worse than normal when under threat of life and limb.”
“Be helpful if neither of you imbeciles hit the other.” Sean pointed to the data swirling in the holo tank, indicating that her two resident morons should pay attention. “These here are the schematics for Virtue Station. Like all Orion Guard stations, this one—”
“Hold up,” said Kiyoshi. “OG?”
“Yeah,” said Sean. She squinted at him. “You going soft, Kiyoshi?”
“I used to be OG,” Kiyoshi grunted. “There’s a formula, right? If they call a place something like ‘Virtue,’ it’s the exact opposite.”
“Doesn’t matter. Virtue Station has a low guard rota.” She nodded at the holo tank, highlighting the data that showed guard patrols. “The station’s main function is as a freight distribution facility. The data sliver says there’s a new pot of gold arriving at the end of that rainbow. Transcend weapons. They’re keeping the shipment on the downlow. Need to know. Seems piracy’s an issue, and they think there’s a leak.”
“They’re not wrong,” said Luke. “I’ve seen sieves hold better water.”
“Their loss is our gain,” said Sean. “In and out. Easy money.”
“Sorry.” Kiyoshi coughed. “Did you just say ‘easy money’?”
“The captain’s right,” said Luke. He peered at the data in the holo tank. “Relaxed guards. Almost no ships insystem. Just…well, two. The ship dropping off the cargo, and the one picking it up. Not even both at the same time. And a box that’ll fit in the hold with room to spare. We swoop in, blow the side of the station, nab the cargo, and get laid.”
“Get rich, you mean,” said Kiyoshi. “We get rich.”
“Good to see you’re onboard with the plan,” said Luke. “Anyway, I skipped the ‘get rich’ part, and went straight to what I’m going to do with my share.”
“I think our time window reduces the longer we talk,” said Sean. “Average Guy will be picked up by someone—”
“Who the fuck is Average Guy?” asked Kiyoshi.
“And once he’s picked up without the data sliver, the whole thing’s blown. So let’s get out into the black and get going, yeah?” She looked between the two of them. “Or do you not like money all of a sudden?”
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” said Kiyoshi.
“Then we’re fine,” said Luke. “You’ve always got a bad feeling.”
“It’s because bad things always happen!”
“You worry too much,” said Luke. “It’ll be a twenty-minute job.”
“Every twenty-minute job is one sheared bolt away from being a three-day ordeal,” Kiyoshi groused.
Sean smiled.
The Promise would detach from the station, and once clear, jump. Once at Virtue Station, a modest hour’s work would see them wealthy beyond all her dreams for a single mission.
Today was going to be a very good day.
CHAPTER TWO
STELLAR DATE: 04.28.8945 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Promise
REGION: Vasara System, Orion Freedom Alliance
Vasara System. Sean hated it already. There was an ugly red dwarf star, looking like it wanted to be elsewhere. A few miserable rocks orbited the dimly glowing orb—nothing you could mistake for being large enough to mine for credible wealth. And then there was Virtue Station, paddling laps of the star like it was bored and wanted to be elsewhere as well.
It probably did. Hell, she was bored already, and they’d only jumped in three days ago.
The Promise was running dark. Sean had stolen it a few years back, when her family had tried to execute a friend of hers, Marci Fowler. The ship had worn the name Precursor then, but Sean felt the new designation was more fitting. She’d promised Marci an escape from mistaken justice, and when that proved impossible, even for the ruling elite, Sean had stolen the Precursor and whisked her friend to safety.
The story didn’t have a fairytale ending, though. Sean frowned, remembering. Marci had eaten plasma on the way out, her body charred. But even as she’d died, she’d thanked Sean, and asked her to help others like her. Marci hadn’t meant lawbreakers; she’d meant people without hope. What could you say to someone’s dying request? The answer could never be ‘go fuck yourself’, so Sean had put a different name on the hull, and started looking for excuses to beard the OFA.
The Promise was small, not quite forty meters nose to tail, but it was equipped with stealth tech. It made getting away from curious encounters easy, and made jumping into systems ripe for piracy easier still. If she was never seen, she would never be caught, and she could buy back a little piece of Marci’s soul, one job at a time.
Truth was, finding work for a ship so small was a tricky matter, but the Promise was something she would keep forever. If her family ever saw her again—and she hoped they might, one day—Sean wanted them to see Lady Spiller, at the head of a pirate galleon.
Rock and roll, fam, rock and roll. Turning her attention to the present, she ordered, “Show me what’s out there. Luke?”
“Aye.”
“Passive scan. Not like last time.” She shook her head. “What’s the point of a stealth ship if you use active scan?”
Luke hung his head, muttering something that sounded like ‘one damn time’, but the bridge holo tank cleared, then filled with Vasara System’s data. The Promise’s eyes saw the station, one ship snuggled against the side. There was debris, nothing more than space trash, floating out in the black near the station. It suggested that someone there was lazy or incompetent with disposal. Lazy-slash-incompetence in one area implied the trait across the board, and Sean felt it was her duty to relieve the idiots of their wealth.
She pointed to the debris. “That stuff going to be a problem?”
“Do you want to hit it at a significant percentage of c?” asked Luke.
“No.”
“Then we’re good,” he said.
Luke’s big problem was that he thought he was better than both Sean and Kiyoshi because of his family connections. He was basically royalty back on his homeworld, but too much inbreeding had left him lacking in skills.
What, with the OFA denying genetic modifications, he was left with mediocre DNA that rendered him a modest pilot at best. But he was willing, and Sean would take enthusiasm over skill most days.
It didn’t hurt that Luk
e seemed to be lucky—that one time aside.
“I don’t like it,” said Kiyoshi.
He’d taken the time to suit up, his OG armor in excellent condition, minus the abrading at shoulder and breastplate. Kiyoshi had filed off the markings from the military he used to serve, as if it could erase what he’d done in their service. He was packing his signature coilgun, which was a pretty good choice, considering they might be fighting in vacuum.
“You don’t have to like it. You just have to shoot everyone who wants to shoot me,” said Sean. She flashed a grin. “Remember. If they’re pointing guns at me, shoot ‘em.”
“What if they want to shoot me?” Kiyoshi asked.
“I’m sure you’ll use your judgment,” said Sean. She turned to Luke. “Take us in.”
The station’s schematics showed the bottom section as being their best line of entry. Cut a hole, enter through the station’s storage, and work up two decks to the cargo bay. As far as plans went, it had the benefit of simplicity. At least someone else had done all the recon for this one. All Sean had to do was capitalize on their hard work.
Finding a buyer for Transcend weaponry would be simplicity itself. The money was basically in her account already. One small wrinkle would be the station’s security team, who would get agitated if they breached Virtue. Trip an alarm, and the hornets would swarm.
As Luke maneuvered the ship toward the station, Sean left the bridge with a nod to Kiyoshi to look after things. She needed to suit up as well.
Kiyoshi could handle most everything just fine, including breaching and boarding a hostile station crewed by imbeciles, but Sean felt better lending a hand. Never ask someone to do something you wouldn’t do yourself. And it never hurt to have someone at your back.
Sean’s cabin was a plain affair, just a bunk, a san, and a closet with her effects. She dragged her suit out of the closet. It was a pretty piece of gear, stolen, just like the Promise. The woman she’d stolen it from claimed the suit came from the Transcend, and it might even be true. Lightweight and armored, it was like a second skin for Sean on their missions.
Next, she pulled a particle gun from the closet. Sean couldn’t let Kiyoshi up her on style with that coilgun. Nothing like a bit of cherenkov blue to show who was in charge.
Closing the cabinet, she paused. Something caught the corner of her eye. Something about her san wasn’t right; everything was there, but not where it should be. It was like someone had re-ordered the items inside. It was unlikely to be Kiyoshi or Luke, because she’d threatened to space either one of them if they entered her cabin.
Sean frowned. The coffee cup. The san.
Silence on the Link.
Ah, thought Sean. I know what’s going on.
* * * * *
The Promise was a comfortable ship, but that didn’t make her a simple ship. Sean’s suspicion was that a long line of smugglers had owned her before she’d come into the captain’s possession. It meant that there were plenty of places to hide cargo, should a captain decide they disliked the level or nature of tariffs being levied at a station.
A small weakness with the ship was a lack of AI. The Promise could take an AI, but there hadn’t been one when Sean had…‘permanently borrowed’ her. She’d never found the time or inclination to get one, so that meant a manual check of everything on the ship. Most times that was fine, busywork that kept her from thinking about what a bunch of asshats the OFA were, but sometimes it was a nuisance.
Like when she had to check security logs.
Sean used her cabin’s console to check through the footage and found what she was looking for. Gotcha.
Leaving her cabin, she hefted her particle gun, then paused. A weapon that would blow someone into small pieces seemed too final. Maybe the carrot is better than the stick?
Sean let her feet lead her down the corridor, past Kiyoshi’s and Luke’s cabins, past the three spare cabins, and through the airlock into the cargo bay.
The logs showed a small person, shoulders slouched, head ducked under a hood, as they hacked their way onto the Promise before they’d left the station.
Honestly it wasn’t that different from what Sean had done ten years earlier. Except, she admitted—if only to herself—this stowaway was a lot faster.
Whoever it was, they had crazy hacking skills. Busting through the Promise’s security had taken all of Sean’s tricks, but this person had done it in about a minute, managing to look—even with their hood up—casual the entire time.
Well, that was just one more reason to hate ‘em. Now all Sean needed to do was find said stowaway. The bay was empty, which felt like a crime in itself, but it did kind of reduce the number of places a person could hide.
It was only a complication. A rogue element like a stowaway wasn’t the end of the world…unless they happened to signal the Orion Guard while Sean and Kiyoshi were on a mission. Best to flush the nuisance out now, and offer a choice: pay for passage, or exit through the airlock, regardless of what was on the other side.
Sean had a reputation to maintain.
“So,” she said, to the apparently empty hold. “Here’s how it’s going to be. You come out, or I expose the hold to vacuum. Your call.”
She turned, walking back through the airlock to the crew quarters, and cycled it closed.
Nothing.
Call my bluff, huh?
No problem.
Sean used her Link to prime the external airlock controls for the hold. Through her airlock’s viewport, she could see red lights strobe in the cargo bay, readying to open it to the black. No way it would be a super fun experience for anyone in there. Loud noises, bright lights, and the threat of impending doom.
Still nothing.
Sean sighed, then used the Link to open the outer cargo bay airlock. She gave it to the count of ten, shrugged, and opened the inner airlock. She could imagine the roar of explosive decompression as air exited into the void. She could also imagine Luke swearing as the Promise shifted on approach to the station, the purging of so much atmosphere a mule kick to the ship’s side.
It went from hard-to-breathe, straight to fuck-me-that’s-a-vacuum in a handful of seconds. Sean watched through the viewport as a section of wall flipped away, exposing a smuggler’s compartment inside.
A person was struggling out, waving their arms and generally appearing excited in the face of impending death.
Sean Linked the external airlock shut, the interior of the bay compressing. It took a lot longer to get a breathable atmosphere back in there, and she imagined her stowaway wondering if they were going to die while they waited.
Thirty seconds later, Sean opened the crew deck’s airlock, striding inside. She held her particle gun ready, but not directed at the stowaway. No need to get off on entirely the wrong foot, right?
The stowaway was gasping for air, hands clutching at the deck. They still had their hood up. Sean reached down, tugging it away to reveal a woman. Her face was pale, though both her skin and eyes showed a few burst capillaries, courtesy of decompression, but in Sean’s experience, she looked like she’d be fine.
“Hi,” said Sean.
The woman at her feet continued to gasp for air, so Sean continued.
“Look, I know how you must feel. I do! You thought you’d gotten away. In the clear. No more shitsville station. The problem is that you stowed away on my ship. The Promise doesn’t fly for free. You’ve got to pay.”
The stowaway’s breathing calmed, and she coughed, then said, “You’re going to kill me
anyway.”
“Might,” agreed Sean. “No one would think worse of me for it.”
“I would,” said the woman.
Sean laughed.
My, but this one had a bit of honest to God fire in her.
“What do you call yourself?” she asked.
“Jaimee,” the woman said. “Jaimee Saint Clair.”
“ ‘Jaimee’ sounds like a boy’s name,” said Sean.
“So does ‘Sean’,” said Jaimee. “Like a curse from parents who didn’t love us enough.”
“I was aiming to throw you out an airlock, but you’ll be pleased to know you’ve made me reconsider,” said Sean. “Couple questions, if you don’t mind.”
“Shoot. Not with the gun, I mean. Oh, hell. Ask your questions.”
Jaimee started to get up, and Sean waved the particle gun. “How about you stay down there? OK, there are three questions. Firstly, how’d you get on my ship so fast? I’m guessing it’s some kind of hackit, but I didn’t see it in the logs. Second, who told you my name? And third, lucky last, what’s to keep me from throwing you into space?”
Jaimee nodded, like she was agreeing with something. “OK.” She pulled her knees close as she sat on the ground. “OK. Here it is. No hackit. Reason’s simple: your security’s shit. No, I mean that. It’s like you bought it from a school that specializes in flower arrangement, but decided to try their hand at ship security.”
Fair, thought Sean.
The Promise’s security was a little on the elderly side, but still. Jaimee had been fast.
“Second question…. Right. So, you know the thing about ship security? It’s inside and out. While you were onstation, I looked in the ship’s computers. And I have to know…. Kiyoshi Langford? Even the guy’s name is confused. Ex-military guy like that? Bound to be problematic.”
