by M. D. Cooper
“That’s odd,” the guard said as he ran the scanner over her hand. “I’m not getting any station ident off you.”
Sera smiled and turned, one hand sliding up her left leg and then behind her back. “I’m new; I’m just trying to do a good job.” Humanity had been civilized for twelve thousand years, but men still hadn’t outgrown their inability to think straight when a woman turned on her charm.
“Right, you can do a good job from detention while I check you out.”
Apparently, some men had evolved.
Sera said.
Sera slid the pistol she had reached for out from behind her back and jammed it under the guard’s chin. “Tight beam your access codes and tokens to me, or I spray your brains on the roof.”
The man nodded slowly, and Helen confirmed that he sent his codes. Sera gestured for him to turn and when he did, she fired a pulse at the small of his back. It was a simple yet effective way to stun someone for a few hours. He slumped and she caught his weight with a grunt. A minute later, she had him stuffed into the maintenance shaft and Helen was faking his patrol signal on the net so he wouldn’t be missed.
Without any further incident, Sera made her way to the security station outside the power generation section.
Helen said without rancor.
Without another word, she stepped out from cover and strode directly up to the two guards. An automatic turret tracked her as she approached the two men.
“Hey guys. How’re you doing?” she asked with a friendly smile, attempting to walk right passed them.
“Hold it.” One of the guards said as they both reached forward to stop her progress. Sera halted half a step before they expected and grasped each guard’s outstretched wrists. Their expressions were priceless as she leapt backwards and pulled the guards toward her and into one another. The guards stumbled and crashed to the floor.
Sera kicked the man on the left in the face as he struggled to get up, the heel of her boot ripping open his cheek. The other guard kicked the back of her other leg, hitting her knee and knocking her backwards. Sera took advantage of the momentum, twisted and fell onto the guard—her elbow smashing into his chest. The sickening crack of his sternum reverberated up her arm.
Sera used her pistol to stun both men and dumped them in a small cleaning room a short distance back up the corridor.
A countdown appeared in the upper right of Sera’s vision as she ran down the corridors in the direction her map overlay indicated. There would be some techs monitoring the main reactor, but since the secondary one was offline, she doubted that anyone was watching it. She was wrong.
It appeared that The Mark techs were studying the CriEn module even as they were using it. Eight years later and they still didn’t know how it worked.
There were at least a dozen of them in a monitoring station and another group wearing hazsuits in the chamber where the CriEn module stood on a pedestal.
Helen showed Sera a readout of the main power throughput indicators. The CriEn module generated energy by accessing layers of space-time these techs didn’t even know about. It would be easy to generate anomalous readings from the device that wouldn’t put them in harm’s way but would certainly cause them to vacate the premises.
Helen used her access to the station’s secure net to worm her way into the engineering network, and from there to the CriEn chamber. As expected, grav fields were in place around the module to ensure safety. Helen altered the frequency of the fields and the module began to alter its output unpredictably. Its EM field swelled and pushed against the grav fields containing it.
As predicted, the engineers monitoring the device grew concerned, and then frantic as they attempted to stabilize the grav field and contain the module’s EM field. Helen was more than a match for them, and within a minute they had hit their fail-safes and shut down the module. The scientists in the hazsuits had long since vacated the chamber and were crowded into the decontamination room.
With the scientists and engineers focused on discerning the cause of the anomaly, Sera was able to approach their monitoring station, crack the door open, and roll in a canister of gas. Made from the parts they had grabbed along the way, it wasn’t a grenade, but it would do the trick.
It took only seconds for the gas to take effect, and Sera rose from cover as the countdown on her HUD slipped past the four-minute mark.
She ran past the sleeping techs and into the CriEn chamber. The module was seated in a socket, which linked up with the power ports. Sera quickly unlatched it and looked around for something in which to stash the device.
The shot of adrenaline felt like a blow to the chest as her heart fluttered uncomfortably and then increased its pace. She took a deep, steadying breath, then switched her overlay to show the route to the station’s main sensor array—a system that likely saw little use with the station in the dark layer.
She raced past the closet containing the two unconscious guards, their comms squawking through the door with the voice of a superior demanding that they check in. As she reached the curve in the corridor, the station’s power switched to a conservation setting; the main lighting dimmed and ancillary wall holos turned off.
LET’S BLOW THIS JOINT
STELLAR DATE: 07.16.8927 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: The Mark’s Dark Layer Station
REGION: Unclaimed Interstellar Space, Core-Ward of Silstrand Alliance
Sera had just ducked into a servic
e corridor when she heard the sounds of booted feet running down the main hall to the CriEn chamber.
Helen said, sounding somewhat annoyed.
They had several near brushes with guards as she made her way to the sensor array, but Helen had picked up the comm channel and fanned the probes far ahead.
The coast was clear. Sera dashed down the corridor and slithered into yet another access shaft—this one, thankfully, a bit larger than some of the others. The shaft linked with another and she shimmied down it for forty meters before coming to the sensor array’s main trunk line.
Sera thought about what the sensor array would be summoning.
Following the tunnel, they passed into another access shaft, which ultimately led to a freight warehousing area. From there, it should be a short jaunt to the docks to find a ship they could sneak aboard.
One last tussle with her coat getting caught and she climbed through a hatch into the warehouse. Sera dusted off her coat and checked her weapons over.
Sera felt herself blush.
Helen chuckled gently in Sera’s mind.
Satisfied that she was combat ready, Sera peered around the stack of crates she had been hiding behind and scanned the long, dark row of wares.
With the fourth probe functioning as a relay on the sensor trunk line, there were only three available to roam the warehouse. Helen spread them out, showing Sera an overlay of the series of interconnected storage areas and their current location in the maze.
Several security teams were visible on the probe cameras, methodically searching the area.
Sera crept through the stacks of freight with careful precision. Some of them were piled haphazardly, and several times she had to squeeze through some narrow spaces while avoiding the larger alleyways. She had just finished pulling the CriEn module’s case through a narrow opening when she turned to find herself staring into the muzzle of a pulse rifle.
“I don’t think you’re supposed to be down here, ma’am,” the guard said.
“I think that’s the first time all day someone has called me ‘ma’am’,” Sera said and drew her hand down her chest with a smile. The man’s eyes followed her hand, a small smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. She took advantage of his distraction, pushed his rifle to the side as she spun around, driving an elbow into his left eye.
He fell back with a cry and raised one hand to his eye. Sera grabbed his weapon with both hands and wrenched it from his grip, before spinning it and slamming the rifle’s stock into his neck.
The man began to gargle and Sera fired a shot from her stun pistol into his head.
Sera set down the case and slipped off her coat. She pulled her other pulse rifle off its shoulder sling and then pulled the jacket back on, putting the sling overtop. She hooked the shielded case to the sling and then hefted both pulse rifles, one in each hand.
“This is much better. The time for subtlety is over,” she said aloud and stepped out from around the crate. She spun, and her coat billowed behind her, both rifles leveled on a squad of guards who were approaching quietly. “Oops.”
Sera gave a disarming smile, then fired off a flurry of pulses with both weapons before ducking around another stack of containers.
She brought up her targeting overlay and slipped around to the far side of the crate where two troopers were trying to flank her. These men wore body armor and Sera concentrated fire from both rifles on one man and then the other.
Sera turned and fired blindly at the guards coming around the other side of the crate before dashing further into the maze.
The guards gave chase and Helen pointed out where reinforcements were on the route. The station’s compliment of active guards was just over three hundred—with an additional merc garrison of four hundred-fifty. Not to mention all the Mark crews currently on station.
Helen’s mental laugh bubbled as she struck across the station’s private net and hacked the pursuing guard’s HUDs. She threw in the added bonus of making them unable to see with their helmets on. Sera heard collisions and cursing from behind and gave a small laugh when Helen showed her the pastoral landscapes that she had inserted over the guard’s vision.
“Now that evens things out a bit more,” Sera said aloud. She stopped at the end of a long row of crates and turned to fire at her helmet-less pursuers. Three went down and Sera fired down the other side of the row, taking out another goon before a pulse shot hit her right arm.
Her muscles convulsed and the weapon fell from numb fingers.
“Damn,” she said and sucked in a deep breath, falling back against a stack of engine parts. She fired a few blind pulses around the stack to let them know she was still in the fight.
Sera swore and dropped the pulse rifle, pulling a slug-throwing pistol from its holster. The shipping crates provided cover from pulse blasts, but the pistols fired armor piercing rounds at nearly a thousand kilometers per hour. Rebecca may be many things, but she did not have bad taste in weapons.
Trying to take out the enemy without causing fatalities, Sera fired a few low shots. The moment she started killing the soldiers, they would take this fight a lot more seriously and just gas the whole chamber. There were curses and a few grunts as the bullets tore through cargo and into soft flesh. Sera let a few more rounds fly and then took off along a path her HUD showed to be clear.
The guards were more cautious now—following slowly, checking every corner. Within a minute Sera lost them, and soon she was at the opening to the station’s main dock.
It was an aired dock with the ships resting on cradles inside the station. Sera guessed it probably had to do with how they held the station in the dark layer and concerns over mixing the grav fields.
Sera stepped up to one of the pallets that was loaded with crates of food. It was out of the direct line of sight from the docks and she carefully slid the crates aside, making a small space in the center. Placing the CriEn case in first, she squeezed in after and crouched on it, pulling the crates tight around her. Sera pulled a few of the crates over her head in case there were any catwalks out on the docks.
