by M. D. Cooper
Jessica didn’t have time to respond, as the woman with the glowing blade attacked her with a blinding flurry of strikes. She fell back, past Finaeus’s crate. When the woman followed, the side of her head exploded.
Finaeus leaned against the crate and lowered a plasma pistol. “I’m not just a pretty face, you know.”
Jessica nodded and peered around the crate, looking for the other attackers. The crowd had thinned but she still couldn’t spot them anywhere. Then, a projectile round ricocheted off the float and she pulled her head back.
“Silly rabbit…” she muttered. She may not have seen where the shot came from, but her nanoprobes did.
Jessica saw it, too—two more attackers were advancing across the docks, threading the crowd with practiced grace. If they had that many people on the dock, there would be enemies approaching from the rear, as well.
She sent out another wave of probes and saw three more figures coming from behind their position. With the crowd rushing out of the area, she assumed anyone approaching—and not in uniform—was the enemy.
“Take those three yahoos,” Finaeus said. “I’ll back up the mountain man.”
Jessica looked Finaeus up and down. He appeared old, but she suspected that there was a lot more to him that met the eye.
She didn’t respond and dashed after a hauler that was rolling down the docks toward her three targets. She slipped around it and clambered onto its roof. When it drew level with where she anticipated the first of the enemy to be, she peered over the edge.
Sure enough, the man was sidling along the hauler, weapon held ready. Jessica pulled a knife from her boot and dropped onto him, driving the blade through the back of his neck. She turned, searching for the others, only to see one of the enemy almost on top of her.
Jessica dove to the ground as two shots flashed over her head, and flung her knife at him. It spun across the space between them and struck his rifle, lodging in the trigger mechanism. The man pulled it free and squeezed the trigger.
Nothing happened.
“Well, that’s a first,” Jessica muttered as she fired three shots with her pistol. The man dove to the side, and two missed, but the third round clipped his leg.
He cried out and crashed to the ground, where his torso was met with two more of Jessica’s flechette rounds. She stood up just in time to hear a beam weapon discharge to her left and twisted to present a narrower target, but it was too late. The shot caught her in the left arm and punched a hole through her bicep.
“Mother fucker!” Jessica swore as she turned toward the shooter and fired a round at him. The shot went wide, and she slipped on the blood from the first man and crashed to the ground.
The man walked up to her and pointed his rifle at her head, a scowl clouding his face. “Die, bitch.”
Her weapon was out of reach, and he was just beyond kicking range. She started to close her eyes, but stopped and held them open, determined to look at the man who would kill her.
He smirked, and her focus narrowed to his finger as it slid off the trigger guard to pull the small lever that would end her life.
Then, just before it made contact, his hand spasmed and Jessica widened her focus to see three holes appear in his chest.
“You’re welcome,” a voice grunted from her left, and Jessica jerked her head to see Thompson turn and walk away.
* * * * *
Jessica stood at the cargo hatch and watched the last of the local police leave the ship and walk past the bots scrubbing the dock to clean up the bloodstains.
Kruger Station was, if nothing else, efficient at cleaning up the damage and mess from dockside fights.
“That had to be one of the easiest investigations I’ve ever been a part of,” Cargo muttered. “They just flat out believed our story and told us we were free to go.”
“Well, the fact that we had over five hundred witnesses helped. Not to mention the people who attacked us don’t show up in any station registries. They know that we’re involved in something seriously shady and just want us gone,” Jessica replied.
Sabrina added.
“What would we do without you?” Jessica asked with a smile.
“What do you mean, you’re leaving?” Nance screamed from behind them.
Cargo and Jessica turned to see Thompson pushing a float with his personal belongings down the corridor, while Nance trailed after.
“Was that breakup sex? Is that what that was?” Nance yelled. “I should have known you were just trying to make something up to me! It’s the only time you do that—”
Nance stopped, realizing that her tirade had an audience.
“Going somewhere?” Cargo asked Thompson. “I thought now that we had Finaeus you’d realize that this wasn’t a fool’s errand.”
“He already has passage booked on another ship—he had it before you even found Finaeus!” Nance yelled, her face beet-red with rage. “He was just getting in one last screw before he left!”
Thompson sighed and turned to Cargo. “You know I don’t want to go live out in la-la land and have a bunch of colony brats. You got Finaeus, tell Sera I left after, or don’t. I don’t care.”
Jessica bit her tongue as Cargo extended his hand and Thompson shook it.
“It’s been good, Thompson. Maybe we’ll see each other again someday.”
“It has been—mostly,” Thompson replied before glancing at Nance, who stood with tears streaming down her face. “It was good, Nance. You just…you just want different things than I do. You know it was never going to work.”
“Just go!” Nance said, her tone more hurt than angry.
Jessica heard the sound of feet hitting the deck at the bottom of a ladder shaft and Cheeky strode into view.
“Asshole! You going to leave without saying goodbye?”
“Fuck,” Thompson sighed. “Yeah, I sure wanted to. Fine. Goodbye, we had good times, we shot a lot of shit and drank a lot. I have a ship to catch.”
He nodded to Cargo one last time before he turned and walked off the ship.
Nance broke out into fresh sobs, and Cheeky rushed to her side and embraced her. Jessica walked over and put a hand on Nance’s shoulder. She didn’t speak; she knew the woman didn’t want to hear anything from her right now.
Jessica looked up and saw Trevor standing in the passageway. She hadn’t heard him come down the ladder, but there he was. She left Nance’s side and rushed to him.
“I don’t want to wait ’til it’s too late,” she said as she took his hands. “I came damn close to dying back there…and things can change too fast in this life to wait too long for anything.”
Trevor didn’t respond but nodded slowly.
“What I want to say…what I mean is, I love you too, Trevor.”
“I love you, as well, Jessica,” Trevor said with a grin as he swept her into his arms.
“Great,” Cargo said as he walked past. “Another full-on shipboard romance. I’m sure this will end well, too.”
THE ROAD HOME
STELLAR DATE: 04.21.8938 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Sabrina
REGION: Ikoden System, Mika Alliance Space
“It all depends how long you guys want to sit around on this ship,” Finaeus said with a shrug. “It’s about three and a half years from here to New Canaan if we slog it out in the dark layer, or we can sneak through a jump gate.”
“It’ll take longer,” Cheeky added. “We don’t have the fuel reserves to keep Sabrina in the DL for that long. Plus, we have to navigate around a lot of crap out there. With fuel draws and nav time, four years would be the b
est we could hope for.”
Finaeus gestured in Cheeky’s direction. “So there you have it, we should take a jump gate. We can be there in a matter of months, not years.”
“I still can’t believe there even is such a thing,” Nance shook her head. “Near-instantaneous travel across known space? It seems too good to be true.”
“Well, not quite instantaneous—long jumps can take a day—but compared to the dark layer? Yeah, gates make it look like walking.” Finaeus replied.
“But we can’t just go through a gate without a Ford-Svaiter mirror on our ship, right?” Nance asked. “We studied them in school—though it was in a class on failed FTL tech that was never going to work…or so we thought. If I remember things correctly, we need to have a mirror on the front of Sabrina that extends the wormhole. Without it, we just plop out the other side…or worse.”
“Or worse,” Finaeus confirmed.
“So, where do we get one of these mirrors?” Cargo asked. “I bet we won’t find them sitting around any shipyard.”
“I oversaw the project that finally cracked the tech, and have a lot of the data stored up here.” Finaeus tapped his head and gave a lopsided smile. “I’m reasonably certain I could make one—though I’m not terribly excited about the prospect of trying it out for the first time while under fire.”
“Whoa, let’s roll back to that under fire part,” Jessica said. “How much resistance are we looking at? Are these gates all at watchpoints? Sera had led us to believe those are very well defended.”
“Not all of them are at watchpoints,” Finaeus replied. “There aren’t any major installations within a hundred light years of Sol, but we do have need to get in and out of the core from time to time. There’s a gate orbiting a cold white dwarf we found in the depths of interstellar space. It’s only eleven light years from here.”
“What else is there with it?” Cargo asked.
“Probably a dozen ships,” Finaeus replied. “But what are you worried about? This is the ship that smashed that pirate fleet to pieces back in Bollam’s World, right? If I’m not mistaken, and I rarely am, someone on the Intrepid figured out how to use grav tech to create stasis shields—something Transcend scientists, including yours truly, have been trying to do for thousands of years.”
“That’s quite the leap,” Cargo replied. “What makes you think this is that ship from Bollam’s World?”
Finaeus cross his arms over his chest. “It’s my niece’s ship, I know. The ident fake is good, but I’ve seen it before. I can recognize Sabrina even with this altered profile the Intrepid’s engineers gave it.”
“No fooling you,” Cheeky said.
“It’s not quantum physics, people,” Jessica chuckled. “This ship is obviously not from the forty-second century, but by our own admission it was on the Intrepid—ipso facto this is Sabrina, smasher of fleets.”
Sabrina added with a laugh.
“Your ship’s AI is named Sabrina too,” Finaeus said. “Sure there are a lot of ships with a lot of names…but it does add to the evidence.”
“Anyway, how do you propose we get a Ford-Svaiter mirror for our ship from this installation?” Cargo asked, skepticism clearly etched across his face.
Finaeus sighed, his expression finally growing serious. “It’s really going to depend on who is running it now. I have a lot of friends in the Transcend government, and the FGT especially, but few in The Hand. I do think that we could probably just fly up and ask for one. Whether or not they’ll give it to us is another issue altogether.”
“Whoever attacked us back on Kruger Station was either The Hand, or whatever the Orion Guard version of them is—” Jessica began.
“We call them BOGA,” Finaeus interrupted.
“BOGA?” Cheeky asked?
“Bad Orion Guard Agents,” Finaeus grinned. “I coined it myself. I named The Hand, too. Not that dumb name my brother gave it, the Inner Stars Clandestine Uplift Operations. ISCUO—you can’t even pronounce it. The BOGAs also have some fancy name for their operation, but I forget what it is.”
“I like him,” Cheeky laughed and put an arm around Finaeus. “Can we keep him?”
“OK, BOGA or Hand,” Jessica said with a shake of her head. “My money is on The Hand. Do we really want to go see if they’ll make nice?”
“This doesn’t make any sense,” Cheeky said. “I thought Sera ran The Hand now. Why would she send agents to kill us…or at least kill you, Finaeus, after she sent us to find you.”
“The Hand is a big organization,” Finaeus said. “Sera won’t be able to control the whole thing. You can be certain that it is filled with elements actively working against her.”
He sighed. “It’s part of the reason why going to Airtha is out of the question for me. However, I don’t think we face much risk in trying for a jump gate. Worst case scenario we can always dump to the dark layer and run if they aren’t happy to see us. The installation isn’t too far out of our way, so we won’t lose much time.”
“So, we show up and ask them to help us out. If they say no, or get fussy, we just cut and leave?” Jessica asked with a raised eyebrow.
Everyone around the table turned to Finaeus who cleared his throat.
“What is it?” Cargo asked.
“Well, I still have to work out something that will convince them to upgrade Sabrina to be jump-capable rather than just send me through on a courier ship. Also, they’ll only go along with this if we tell them we’re jumping to Airtha. If I know my brother—and I do know him—New Canaan is interdicted with a substantial fleet surrounding it.”
“How are we going to get into New Canaan, then?” Cheeky asked. “This is starting to feel like a fool’s errand.”
Finaeus shook his head. “That’s the glory of the jump gate. I know the layout of that system—roughly. We can plot a jump deep inside and skip past whatever fleet Jeff has guarding it. If I go back into the Transcend, the only place I’ll be close to safe is with your Governor Richards. She has the power now, and Jeff will come to her soon—if he hasn’t already. When he does, Sera will be with him.”
* * * * *
“You in for this?” Jessica asked Trevor when they were alone in one of the ship’s cargo holds.
Trevor set the crate he was carrying down and turned to face her.
“A bit too late to ask that, isn’t it?” he replied with a smile.
Jessica walked up to him and placed her hands on his broad shoulders. “Well, not too, too late. Before we were just flitting about the Inner Stars, weren’t hitting the core, or the Transcend. But now, we’re going to go all-in. There may be no coming back. I know you have family out there…”
She stared into his eyes, hoping he would give her the response she needed to hear while steeling herself in case it didn’t come. His eyes were serious, and his brow lowered. He pursed his lips for a moment, and then a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.
“I know I don’t strike a lot of people as the pensive type…” he began.
“The fact that you have tree-trunks for arms lends to that a bit, yes,” Jessica interjected.
Trevor laughed. “Yeah, I do like to jack up. But it takes a lot of work to run this muscle mass, it’s not for the faint of heart.”
“Don’t I know it,” Jessica replied. “Nance has mentioned more than once that she’s needed to double our food supply since you came on board.”
“Hey, I don’t eat quite that much!”
Jessica fixed him with a penetrating glare and he laughed again.
“OK, maybe. Maybe close to double,” he reached down and wrapped his hands around her waist. “You’re not exactly a stock model either. I’ll admit, your packaging was a big part of my initial draw to you—but when it turned out that you’re not an air-head who turned herself into a sex doll just for fucking and money, that’s when I really got into you.”
This wasn’t the first time Jessica had been told that her physical modifications�
�the tiny waist, lengthened legs, and enlarged breasts—made people unable to take her seriously. Stars, when she was in the Terran Bureau of Investigation, her division chief frequently used it to get the better of suspects, who couldn’t help but be distracted by her.
It was the main reason they let her keep the modifications after the initial undercover op that had required them.
“Jessica?” Trevor asked.
“Oh, sorry, just basking in the moment here. Not going to lie, I keep the bod for fucking—no shame there, I say we should embrace our biological imperatives —but knowing that you want a girl with brains. The fact that you like my total package is damn nice,” Jessica drew her hands down Trevor’s arms before wrapping them around his waist.
“Gotta have the total package,” Trevor replied before his lips met hers in a long kiss.
Jessica lost herself in the breathless feeling in her chest, and the crush of his arms around her before she remembered why she had first sought him out down here and pulled her lips from his.
“And the journey? Your family? What do you want to do?”
Trevor let out a low chuckle. “Stars, woman, this is where it would be nice if you could turn that brain of yours off for a bit.”
She raised an eyebrow and he relented.
“I’ve already committed myself to you, Jessica. I go where you go. I’ve left, what I hope isn’t a final farewell message, to my family—but if it is, it is. You went through much worse, being torn from everything, never getting to say goodbye.”
Jessica nodded wordlessly, her eyes never leaving his. The feeling of loss that came over her when she thought about her parents and what she left behind still hit her hard, even after over a century of time.
“Good, then let’s set that aside and get back to embracing some of those biological imperatives you seem to like so much.”
DWARF STAR MINING
STELLAR DATE: 07.13.8938 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Sabrina
REGION: Edge of Grey Wolf System, Unclaimed Interstellar Space
