by M. D. Cooper
“STC?” Amanda interrupted.
“Space traffic control,” Jessica explained. “Sorry, sometimes I just rattle off acronyms. Anyway, the STC has halted all departures until the mess down on Ring Nine gets cleaned up.”
Amanda laughed. “Nice to have a silver lining.”
“Let’s go see what our friend Alma saw. Maybe we can turn a silver lining into a solid lead.”
TAKING A TOLL
STELLAR DATE: 05.11.8948 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: En route to Alma’s ship, Cerka Station
REGION: Mullens, Virginis System, LoS Space
“It’s quiet here,” Amanda commented as she walked along the concourse with Jessica.
They’d been walking for nearly ten minutes and had left the warehouse district behind. A few blocks on, Amanda figured they must be in one of the less savory areas of the station. There was more trash in the corridors, and the shops and units were sealed up or empty and looted. The ones that were open for business had protective grating over their windows, and holo-graffiti covering their walls.
Even the people seemed to have lost all hope.
“Bad neighborhood,” Jessica replied. “It’s not unusual in stations this big.”
“I guess after the coup, it’s going to take a while to clean everything up. What was it all about?”
“The liberation of AIs who’ve been used basically as slaves for too long, coupled with the AST’s occupation of the outer Virginis System. We kinda started it twenty years ago, when we came through here and Sabrina showed some of the AIs what it meant to be free. One thing led to another, and eventually, fighting broke out. We’re here to help make that right.”
“Sounds like you’re cleaning up some of your own mess a little bit.”
Jessica shrugged. “I guess you could put it that way. We’re trying to make things better, but people can be resistant to change.”
Amanda nodded. “Yeah, I know all about that.”
“Oh?”
“Well, it’s complicated, but back in my universe, I’m part of a small group who are joining a large, well established organization called the Nexus. Some of the member states of the Nexus don’t like the idea of us becoming members. It means change, which they’re resistant to. Also, I think they see it as a power grab, so they’re fighting us. I can see it getting violent before long.”
“The liberation of the AIs is having a similar effect,” Jessica said.
“Hey, ladies, what you doin’ down here, lookin’ all shiny an’ shit?”
Amanda looked up to see a man leaning against the wall, looking them over and licking his lips. He looked as though he could do with a good long bath and a new set of clothes.
“You don’t wanna know,” she replied as they walked past, and then glanced down at Jessica’s fitted, shimmering purple bodysuit—which she had changed into after the Reaver attack—and her own glossy white one. “I guess we don’t exactly blend in,” she commented to Jessica as she glanced back at the man, who was watching them walk off.
“Well, no time to worry about that now, the berth is just ahead on the right.”
Amanda followed Jessica’s gaze and saw that the large loading doors were wide open. They moved closer, slowing down as they went.
~Shall we have a peek inside?~ Amanda asked, as she saw a cloud of nanoscopic machines sweep off of Jessica like smoke in her Aetheric Sight. They’d be invisible to the human eye, but she could see their energy signatures quite clearly.
An image appeared through the Link. Beyond the door, Amanda could see a large bay with a few crates inside, and an airlock on the far wall, which was currently open. Between the two doors, a group of people stood talking.
As Amanda watched, she quickly realized it was actually two groups, and they seemed to be having something of a heated debate.
~What’s going on here?~ Amanda asked as they stopped beside the door.
Jessica replied.
Then the audio began filtering through the feed from Jessica’s nano.
“Don’t play coy with me, Alma,” a man said. He stood at the fore of one of the groups and was addressing a woman wearing a defiant expression, surrounded by several men and women who were giving off some strong, ‘don’t fuck with us’ vibes. “I know you got something from there. Was this another one of your little excursions, or are you working for someone?”
~Maybe,~ Amanda said, unsure. ~Sorry, I really wish I knew more.~
“Hey, shiny hiney, did no one tell you snooping was rude?” a voice yelled out from behind them.
They looked around just in time to see the dirty man who had catcalled them earlier striding down the passage toward them with his weapon raised. A moment later, he fired.
Amanda ducked and moved to the side. Jessica did the same, dashing into the loading bay. Amanda tucked herself behind a stack of crates as shouting broke out from the two groups of people they had been spying on.
She looked up to see that Jessica had gone the other way once through the door, and was nearly ten meters away, firing at the lookout with her gun. She hit him in the shoulder, burning his arm off and knocking him to the floor.
For the first time since her initial arrival, Amanda felt nervous. With her Magic use severely limited, the prospect of a fight actually gave her pause. She wouldn’t normally run from a fight, but this was different. She was in another universe, dealing with highly advanced tech that she wasn’t familiar with, and facing the possibility that she might pass out at any given moment from the strain of using her Magic.
She wasn’t totally convinced that fighting these guys was a good idea.
~Stay or go?~ she asked over the Link, as the noise of gunfire filled the room.
A fight had broken out between Alma’s pirates and the other group, and several shots slammed into the floor around Jessica and herself. Amanda looked toward the door. The man outside that Jessica had shot was pushing himself up with his one good arm, looking confused.
Concentrating as she waited for Jessica’s response, Amanda flushed more Essentia into her Aegis, which she had left untouched since the Reaver attack. There was no avoiding using her Magic now, though. She needed its protection.
Still, she’d felt better this last hour or so….
Maybe I’ll be alright?
She nodded to Jessica as the one-armed man looked in Amanda’s direction and fumbled with his gun. Amanda concentrated and hit him with a small but powerful kinetic punch to his temple, knocking the man unconscious. When she looked over at Jessica, she found that she’d already moved.
Get it together, Mandy, she thought to herself. You might not be able to use your Magic as you’d like, but you can kick these guys’ arses easily enough.
She took a deep breath and focused her mind. She had a job to do. Void was relying on her; now was not the time to get nervous about a fight.
She ducked around the crates she was crouching beside to see the gang who’d been talking to Alma’s group taking cover ahead of her. The immediate impression she got was that these guys were no two-bit Mickey Mouse operation, but heavily armed, competent fighters.
“Shit,” she hissed to herself, her nerves returning in the form of butterflies in her stomach. I might need to use my Magic to do this, she thought.
“Hey,” one of the gang members shouted. He was close by, and swung his gun around to bring it to bear.
Amanda moved and ran for him, ducking right as he fired, and then she was suddenly right on him. Two shots slammed into her Aegis and ricocheted off her Magical shield before she swung out and slapped his gun to the side, and then backhanded him across the face with the same hand, moving with a superhuman
speed.
Blood flew as he yelled in pain. She followed up with a punch to his gut, doubling him over, before she kneed him in the face.
A man next to her target, who had been trying to get shots in at the other group and not paying her much mind, suddenly turned and fired at her, the energy blast from his gun smashing into her Aegis. On instinct, she lashed out with a kinetic ram. The energy rushed out of her and hit the man, flinging him into the crates he was hiding behind.
Amanda felt another wave of dizziness wash over her.
Shite, maybe I’m not over it yet.
She staggered back and looked left to see one of the gang members pull a huge cannon from his back and aim it toward where she was fairly sure Jessica was, but she could only reach for a box to steady herself as the man fired.
There was a huge explosion on the other side of the room, and then the leader of the gang shouted at the man with the cannon and pointed.
Without hesitation, the shooter swung around and fired at her.
Amanda Ported. She hadn’t moved far, but the direction had been random, another reaction based purely on instinct and without much of a plan.
There was more shouting, but her vision was swimming badly. She leant against the wall and looked up as another figure fired at her. Her Aegis flared as it protected her, but the stress of the Magic use was too much, and her vision began to tunnel.
The shooting at her stopped amidst more shouting, and then everything went dark.
DUKING IT OUT
STELLAR DATE: 05.11.8948 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Cerka Station
REGION: Mullens, Virginis System, LoS Space
“Hey, shiny hiney, did no one tell you snooping was rude?”
Jessica’s feed from her nanocloud showed the man they’d passed in the corridor approaching from the rear…with a railgun.
“Shit!” she swore as he fired, diving into the loading bay and rolling behind a stack of crates.
The shot streaked past and struck a bulkhead near where the two gangs stood. After a cursory check that Amanda had gotten to cover on the far side of the entrance, Jessica spun and let fire with her electron beam, burning off the attacker’s right arm and relegating him to the ‘no longer a threat’ category.
Maybe wear armor next time, buddy.
She turned back to the two gangs, both of which were yelling at one another as weapons were drawn, and readied herself for a fight.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d run from a fight. She was aware that Amanda had been suffering recently, though, and wondered if that was putting a dent in her confidence.
She saw Amanda nod, and turned her focus back to the gangs, who had been distracted from yelling at one another by her shooting the lookout.
Weapons fire rained down on her position, and Jessica flipped her flow armor from an iridescent purple to invisible. She moved to a new position and unslung her rifle, lobbing a few concussive crowd control shots into the largest cluster of gang members.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Amanda charge another group of them, their rounds ricocheting off an invisible shield that protected the Magus.
Shit…need to teach her to use a rifle for starssakes.
She was about to move to better cover her partner, when a wave of pulse blasts hit the stack of crates she was hiding behind, knocking the topmost one off. It hit her in the shoulder, but her flow armor solidified around the impact, distributing the force.
It was still unpleasant, and Jessica muttered a curse as she moved around the stack into a new position and fired her arm-mounted electron beam at the woman with the pulse canon.
She’d meant to hit the shooter’s arm, but at the last minute, the woman dodged to the side, and the relativistic stream of electrons cut the thug in half.
“Shit,” Jessica muttered. She’d wanted to be as non-lethal as possible with these enemies—as much to question them later as that she hated the idea of mowing down people with inferior armor and weapons.
Across the room, a stack of crates went flying, several slamming into gang members and sending them sliding across the deck.
A few more shots came her way, and Jessica returned fire before responding.
Jessica fired a few more shots at the enemies near the ship’s entrance, trying to advance so she could cover Amanda, as the Magus carved a path toward Alma, who was backing toward the ship.
She was about to tell the other woman to hold up when she caught sight of one of the thugs pulling a concussive RPG launcher off his back.
“Oh fuck!”
She broke cover, running almost straight for the shooter while praying her stealth would hide her well enough that he wouldn’t see the blurred edges of her form as she raced across the deck.
A second later, the man fired, and the RPG streaked past Jessica, striking her former hiding place and blasting crates in all directions.
The members of both gangs moved in, firing wildly as they worked to keep her pinned down as they cleared the debris in search of her body.
Of course, Jessica wasn’t there anymore.
She’d almost reached the man with the launcher, when he pivoted and fired at Amanda. A wordless scream tore from Jessica’s throat as she slammed into the shooter, knocking him to the ground and sending the launcher flying. She tripped over his leg and fell, rolling to her feet a second later. She searched for Amanda, who was nowhere to be seen.
For a second, she thought the other woman had been completely vaporized, but remembered that teleporting was now a thing.
“Freeze!” a voice yelled from behind her, and Jessica turned to see Alma holding a railgun. “Your stealth’s good, but you picked up some grime on the deck. Show yourself.”
Jessica disabled her stealth, turning slowly and surveying the bay. The other gang was retreating to the station, while Alma’s crew was moving back to their ship. She saw both sides carrying wounded, but the concussive blasts had dispersed her nanocloud, and she couldn’t see if any were transporting Amanda.
“Shit,” Jessica muttered, settling her flow armor to reveal her face. “What a day.”
Alma’s eyes widened as she realized who was standing on the other end of her rifle. “Oh, damn…you’re General Keller.”
“Yeah,” Jessica replied as she dusted off her arms. “And you’re Alma, right? Petty thief?”
“Ship captain,” the other woman corrected, drawing herself up. “And I think I just pulled in a major haul.”
It was clear that she intended to take Jessica hostage when she nodded for two of her nearby crewmembers to approach her prize.
“If you touch me, I’ll melt your skin off,” Jessica warned the woman on her left. “I’m sure you know what I can do.”
“Shoot lightning from your hands?” Alma asked. “Trickery. Now get on the ship. I bet we can get a million credits for you.”
Jessica sighed and held her hand up for the gang leader to be silent.
The AI sent an incredulous snort.
Iris laughed.
“I’m not sure you know how this works,” Alma said while Jessica finished her conversation with Iris. “I’ve captured you, so now you have to do what I say.”
“Yeah, sure,” Jessica nodded as she turned and began walking toward the ship’s open cargo airlock. “Let’s go already. CPS is gonna be here any minute.”
Alma and her two companions shared confused looks and then followed Jessica onto the ship, one stopping to close the airlock while the captain kept her rifle trained on their captive.
“Seriously, General, we’re not just going to let you wander around our ship. You’re going into our brig.”
“Brig?” Jessica cocked an eyebrow. “This little tub has a brig?”
“It’s a bigger ship than your Sabrina, and yes.”
“Size doesn’t count for everything. Trust me.”
“This chick’s weird,” the man beside her said.
Jessica turned to the man as she felt the telltale vibration of the ship undocking. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
He stepped closer, and Jessica reached out and grabbed him by the neck. His hands came up, ineffectually clawing at his wrist as she lifted him off the ground.
“Don’t,” Alma growled, pulling her railgun against her shoulder. “I don’t want to have to kill the golden goose.”
A burst of energy flowed from Jessica’s hand into the man’s neck, and he went unconscious.
“Yeah, let’s not do that,” she replied, opening her hand and letting the thug fall.
“Shit,” whispered the woman who had mocked Jessica’s ability to shoot lightning a minute before.
Alma’s eyes had widened, but she still had her weapon trained on Jessica. “Brig. Now!”
“Captain,” Jessica shook her head. “You don’t seem to understand what’s happening here. I’m not your captive. I came here to ask you what you saw in those containers when you broke into the VDF’s storage facility. If your dumbass out on the dock hadn’t shot at us, we’d just be having a friendly conversation right now.”
