by M. D. Cooper
“I see you found her stash,” Sera said, eyeing the dozen guns piled on a desk.
Andy nodded, finally taking his eyes from her body. “She had them all over. There’s spare power cells, and ammunition for a few chemical slug throwers.”
“Nice work,” Sera said. She wasn’t quite ready yet to get up again and admired the weapons from her place on the bed.
“Since my neck is now on the line, are you going to tell me how you got out of there?” Andy asked.
“Does it require much telling? I got free, beat the living piss out of Rebecca and tied her up. Now, there’s something I need to get from this station, then I’m going to blow this place and get back to my ship.”
“And that outfit’s your disguise?”
Sera laughed. “I wasn’t really planning to be disguised; I just think it looks good. You can’t really see me kicking ass in a pantsuit, can you?
Andy raised an eyebrow.
“Hey. You’re a medic, that’s your thing. Looking hot and kicking ass, that’s my thing.”
Helen laughed.
Andy shrugged. “OK, so what is your plan, then? Seduce all the guards between here and the docks and then get cozy with a captain?”
Sera grinned. “Do you think that will work?”
“No.”
“Good, be a damn sad pirate organization if it did. First, I have to get to a secure terminal and look something up and go get it. Then I plan to shoot my way to the docks, hijack a ship, and get out of here.”
“Suicide I am not in for. Have fun with that,” Andy said and walked to the door. Sera was there in three strides, ignoring the fiery feeling in her muscles.
“Look you don’t have to come; in fact, I’d prefer you don’t. But I do want to say thank you.”
Andy looked taken aback. “Umm…you’re welcome. I’m sorry I didn’t help you when you first asked.”
“Rebecca’s even sorrier,” Sera said with a chuckle.
“I bet she is.”
“Look, when I said ‘blow this place’, I was being literal. When the alarms and alerts start telling everyone to get off the station, do it. Don’t wait around; I’m sure at least a few captains will take their ships and run.”
“What are you planning to do?” Andy asked.
“I’m not sure yet, but I’ll promise two things. It will be irreversible, and I’ll give fair warning before it happens.”
Andy nodded. “Thanks for the heads up, my days would have been numbered anyway once surveillance discovered you are free and I helped.” He opened the door. “I’ll be seeing you.”
“Probably not. You lay low until you hear the alarms.”
Andy left and Sera turned back to the pile of weapons. She pulled out a thigh holster and slipped it onto her left leg, then slid a small slug thrower into it. Several throwing knives went into the tops of each boot. She rummaged through a drawer and found several small remote cameras.
Sera said as she felt the biopolymer that was her skin.
Sera slid two holsters onto the belt she wore and pulled two bandoliers filled with ammunition over her shoulders.
Helen gave the AI’s equivalent of a laugh.
Sera shifted from foot to foot. She had to be wearing at least twenty kilograms of weaponry. She slipped back into the wardrobe and found a long black jacket that fell nearly to her ankles. After Helen made certain it wasn’t DNA locked, she slipped it on, ensuring that she could leave it open while not revealing the full extent of her armament.
The four tiny probes flew out of Sera’s mouth, one settling on an access port for the room’s terminal.
The probe disappeared as it slipped into the access port and linked with the station’s general computer net.
The room’s main holo activated, showing the layout of the station. Helen searched through access points, then made a noise of surprise.
Sera stopped her investigation of the station’s public net.
Helen indicated the location on the holo she was displaying. Sera zoomed in and traced a path from Rebecca’s quarters. It was two decks down and across a good quarter of the station.
“This’ll be fun,” Sera said with a smile.
Sera slipped out into the hall, heels snapping and long coat rustling.
Sera smirked.
Sera obliged her AI and a moment later all sound from her movements ceased.
Sera slipped silently down the corridor and into the stairwell. The four probes ranged ahead and behind, keeping an eye on all surveillance equipment, sending signals to them, providing normal visual and audio feeds.
The stairs were narrow and Sera moved down them gracefully, peering over the rail to ensure the next landing was clear.
Helen replied with a superior tone.
Sera didn’t respond she continued down the stairs.
At the second landing, Sera cracked the hatch ever so slightly, allowing a probe to slip past the seal. Both she and Helen watched the visual feed, Sera accessing the infrared and ultraviolet ranges she normally excluded from her vision.
Sera strode down the center of the corridor. No point in looking suspicious to anyone leaving the dining area. As she neared the opening to the hall, two men stepped out.
“Whoa, yeah,” one exclaimed. “I know you’re new, ’cause I’d remember a sweet looking thing like you!” His friend elbowed him, but the man continued, taking a step toward Sera. “That’s one sexy getup. You’re a randy little bitch, aren’t you?”
She didn’t want conflict, but no woman dressed as she was on a Mark station would take talk like this without a fight, or a tumble between the sheets.
Sera stepped toward him, exuding sexual energy. “I am a bit new here. Care to show me around?”
The man laughed and moved closer. “Hell yeah, we can start with my cabin.”
When he moved into range, Sera reached out with her right hand and grabbed his hair. In the same fluid motion, she reached down with her left hand, and pulled a blade from the top of her right boot. She pushed him back against the wall, wrenching his head back and pressed the blade in her left hand against his neck.
She sneered and ground her hips into him. “I like it rough, and I’ve got six more of these little blades. I don’t like to stop until each one has gotten a taste of blood. Where’s your cabin?”
The man’s friend was laughing so hard that he had a hand against the wall to steady himself.
“I…uhh…can’t right now…I’m on shift soon,” the first man stammered.
Smoothly, Sera stepped back and let go of him, a sultry pout on her lips. “Always work with you types. Oh well.” She put the blade back into her boot and blew him a kiss. “I’ll keep an eye out for you.”
He reddened and all but ran down the hall. His friend followed, clutching his gut as he laughed.
They slipped into the service corridor without seeing anyone else. It was little more than a shaft, which ended at a hatch leading to a larger thoroughfare. The hatch stood open and Helen sent two probes through. There was mild foot traffic, but no troops or guards of any sort.
Sera stepped through and took a left. Some of the men and women eyed her with appreciation, some with wariness, but most just ignored her. There was no shortage of men and women wearing racier clothing than Sera’s. She began to suspect that The Mark had a brothel on the station.
She took a right at the next intersection and then another left further down. The terminal she was looking for was in a vertical maintenance shaft off this corridor. The probes spied the shaft’s access eight meters away and Sera approached it nonchalantly. The coast was clear, but as she neared the hatch, two guards rounded a corner and began walking toward her.
Sera muttered a curse to herself and kept walking past the hatch. She passed the guards and winked at them. They both smiled at her in response. When she neared the end of the corridor, the probes behind her showed the two guards turn down a side passage. She doubled back and opened the shaft access panel, slipping in with a bit of trouble when her jacket bunched up beneath her. Once in, she hooked a foot on the access panel and pulled it shut.
Sera slithered down the tight space to the location indicated on her HUD, and took a deep breath. She held her index finger against the port and silver metal flowed out through the outstretched digit, forming a probe which then seated itself into the port.
Sera studied the station’s layout as Helen accessed the secure net. Even without knowing exactly where the artifact they were searching for was, there were only so many places it could be hidden. The station’s own power grid should show its location—even if they hadn’t decided to use it. If they had, then it should be even easier.
Helen said.
Sera looked over the portions of the station labeled as power generation. If they were using the CriEn, it would be around there. It didn’t have to be, but a smart engineer would place it near existing power distribution systems.
Helen said.
It was one of the difficulties of maintaining systems in the dark layer: heat dispersion. In regular space, the cold of vacuum was a great way to disperse heat; in the dark layer, there was nothing to disperse heat to. The heat
could be transformed into energy, but when it was permeating everything, that was hard to do. The CriEn module generated energy with no heat, which was the key to keeping a station in the dark layer.
Sera worked out the route to the station’s power plant while Helen used nano to build a bridge from the station’s secure net to the public net and placed the link into an encrypted stream. Unless they were looking, the station security systems wouldn’t stand a chance of locating it.
<’Was’ being the operative term,> Helen replied.
Sera grabbed the kit and pulled herself back up the access tube, and checked the two probes they’d left out in the hall. When the coast was clear, she flipped the latch and kicked the hatch open.
She eased out into the hall, but at the last minute, a bandolier caught on the hinge. She stumbled and fell to the floor before freeing herself and closing the panel.
She stood up and dusted herself off before looking up to see a guard walking toward her.
“Hey, what were you doing in there?” he asked.
“I’m tech; got a call that there was a down net coupling in there and I fixed it up.”
The guard was unconvinced. “You’re tech?”
“Yeah, I’m off duty.” Sera made sure to stand so that her coat hid the weapons, but not her shapely legs.
“Why don’t you spread your hands across that wall there while I check your ident?” The guard pulled out a scanner and stepped toward Sera as she placed her hands on the wall.”
