by M. D. Cooper
“So?” Jessica asked.
“So what?” Finaeus asked back.
Cargo rose from his seat and approached Finaeus. “What do you have up your sleeve, old man? Time’s running short. There’s a whole lot of troops forming up around us out there."
Jessica hadn’t looked at the exterior views; when she checked, she saw that Cargo wasn’t exaggerating. There were at least a hundred TSF soldiers in the bay. They were setting up defensive shields and heavy weapons all around Sabrina.
“No problem,” Finaeus said as he altered the view on the bridge holotank. “There’s Krissy walking into the bay. I’ll just go down and talk to her and—”
“Seriously, Fin,” Jessica shook her head. “For some sort of big smart guy, you’re damn stupid. They want you most of all. I’ll go out and see what we can work out.”
“Correction,” Cargo said. “We’ll go out. Sabrina, if we’re not back in twelve hours, and everything isn’t all hunky-dory, you fire up the AP drive and blast your way out of this joint. I don’t care who gets fried. Sera wants Finaeus delivered to New Canaan, and she’ll get him.”
“OK,” Jessica said. “Then here’s the plan…”
* * * * *
“This is a horrible plan,” Jessica muttered as the ship’s airlock cycled. “We’ve had some dumb plans over the years, but this is the worst…the absolute worst.”
“Jess, it’s your plan; have a little faith in yourself,” Cargo replied.
“I thought someone would come up with a better plan! This was supposed to be the starter plan…the one that got the juices flowing. Not the plan.”
“I guess you’re just a strategic genius,” Cargo chuckled.
“Go me,” she replied as the pressure equalization light turned green and the outer lock door began to open.
She glanced to Cargo, who wore a sharp uniform, and then to her own outfit: a tight blue one-piece suit that Trevor had picked up for her a few systems back. It was a favorite of his because he liked that it set off her skin and hair.
Probably not the most conservative thing to meet the Transcend’s admiral in, but it was what she had on, and there was no time to change.
Even so, she hated being at a disadvantage—and something about Krissy led Jessica to believe that her mode of dress may lower her value in the admiral’s eyes.
Iris said.
The airlock door slid aside and revealed the muzzles of sixty guns pointed at them. The weapons—and the soldiers holding them—were on the far side of the stasis shield, but it still felt damn disconcerting.
In their midst stood Admiral Krissy, a look of grim displeasure on her face.
Jessica filed that away for future consideration as they approached the woman.
“Here goes,” she whispered as the stasis shield opened enough for them to step through.
“Welcome to Gisha Station,” Admiral Krissy said as they approached. She walked forward to meet them, but did not offer her hand.
“Thank you, though the welcome seems strained,” Cargo replied, glancing at the soldiers filling the docking bay.
“You did fire on this station,” Krissy said. “I cannot ignore that fact.”
“And I tell you that we did no such thing. Our logs show that our weapons were offline, and we provided them to your STC immediately,” Cargo responded. “There is no logical reason that would cause us to fire on you.”
“So you say, but we have to trust our own sensors, and they do not back your story.”
The woman paused, and Jessica waited for the hammer to fall.
“I am placing you under arrest for violating the sovereignty of the Transcend Interstellar Alliance, and firing on one of the FGT’s installations during a time of war.”
“Wow,” Jessica muttered. “And I assume that’s a war crime on your books?”
Krissy nodded. “It is. My hands are tied here. Our laws are very strict when it comes to the FGT. We brook no violence toward them.”
“How very noble of you,” Cargo replied. “So, what’s next? The hot irons? Needles? Trust me, you’re not going to crack us, or the shell around our ship.”
“We’ll see about that,” Krissy replied. She turned, and eight TSF soldiers approached with weapons leveled. Jessica looked to Cargo, sighed, and held out her hands.
* * * * *
“Think we’ll be meeting with that Colonel Bes before long?” Jessica asked as she and Cargo sat in a small conference room.
She was surprised that they hadn’t been separated. Perhaps Admiral Krissy wasn’t fully onboard with what was going on, and wasn’t going to make things any easier for the Grey Division man.
“Probably. I hope so. Room service here sucks,” Cargo replied. “Would it kill you guys to bring in some coffee?” he hollered at the closed door.
Cargo said.
As they were speaking, the door opened and Admiral Krissy entered, still alone—something Jessica had not expected.
She gave both of them a long look before sitting down at the table.
“Smart move leaving Finaeus in there,” she said. “Bes would have snatched him up so fast that I wouldn’t have had any time to explore other options.”
“Don’t see eye to eye with your friends in the 137th?” Cargo asked.
Krissy gave a rueful laugh. “I see Finaeus has been sharing details. Yes, the Grey Division and most of the TSF do not see eye-to-eye. Bes wants you, too, by the way,” Krissy said with a nod to Jessica.
“Who? Little ol’ me?” Jessica asked with mock innocence.
“Yes, you; Jessica Keller, born in Athabasca, District of Saskatchewan, the year 4052 on the old Gregorian calendars. You joined the Terran Bureau of Investigations when you were twenty-six, and graduated with honors from their training facility in Rio de Janeiro in the year 4082. After that, you were stationed in High Terra; though there are a few sections of your record that are blank—likely classified at the time—and never made it to us.”
“Wow!” Jessica exclaimed with a clap of her hands. “You just know all about me, now, don’t you? Should we move next into a little game where we show off our powers of observation to one another? Nit about small stains and eyebrow hairs out of place,
then surmise life-traits from those? It could pass the time while you wait to see if Bes’s orders are valid before you have to turn Finaeus over to him—which you don’t want to do, because our quirky old man means something to you, and you to him. Or you wouldn’t have let our ship dock in the station,” Jessica paused, gauging Krissy’s reactions. “You really have no reason to fear that he’ll blast his way out of here, do you?”
A small smile pulled at the edges of Admiral Krissy’s lips. “So you are smarter than you look. I’d hoped so.”
“Why’s that?” Cargo asked.
“Because Bes’s orders are validated, and he’s coming here to collect you,” Krissy replied. “I don’t know who approved them, but it has all the right tokens. There’s nothing I can do.”
“Funny that I’m top of mind for him,” Jessica said.
“Yes, the Grey Division wants you almost as much as they want Finaeus; though I don’t quite know what has piqued their interest so much. Perhaps they think you know something useful about the Intrepid’s picotech.”
“They’d be disappointed,” Jessica replied. “That’s above my pay grade.”
“And the rest of us?” Cargo asked.
Krissy shrugged. “Standard containment procedures.”
“That doesn’t sound promising,” Cargo said.
“Conditioning, if you’ll take it—incarceration if you won’t, or if the conditioning doesn’t take.”
“The same,” Krissy replied nonchalantly.
“So, what’s our play?” Cargo asked Jessica. “Think if we take her, we can use her as a hostage?”
“Not against Bes; that guy probably doesn’t give a rat’s ass about Krissy here. But if we can get the word out to her fleet, they may feel differently.”
“We don’t negotiate with hostage-takers,” Krissy replied amicably. “Though I would like to think that my fleet would try something to save me; hard to say, though.”
“You seem unconcerned with the turn this conversation has taken,” Cargo said.
Krissy shrugged. “I knew what I was getting into when I came in here alone. I won’t be complicit in anything. I believe in the Transcend, but I don’t believe in Bes and his Greys. And I’m certainly not going to sacrifice Finaeus on their altar. Just make sure it’s nothing too damaging.”
“Do you have an AI?” Jessica asked.
“No, I’m currently between AI,” Krissy replied.
“Good, that will make this simpler.”
Jessica’s restraints fell from her limbs and she lunged across the table, grabbing Krissy’s throat with one hand, and placing another on the base of her skull.
The admiral put up a good fight, and Jessica took an elbow to the face, then another to her throat.
“Fuck!” Jessica screamed as Krissy almost wrenched free, and then Cargo was there, his strong arms holding the admiral in place as Jessica finally managed to get her finger on Krissy’s hard-Link port.
A moment later the Admiral went limp.
“Well, that was easy,” Jessica said.
“I sure hope that part of this little ruse she set up involved fooling the room sensors for a bit,” Cargo said.
“Had to, or we’d be neck-deep in soldiers by now,” Jessica replied.
Jessica quickly stripped out of her clothing as Cargo undressed the Admiral. Four minutes later, she was doing up the last button on the rather uncomfortable formal jacket Krissy wore, as Cargo was settling Krissy down in Jessica’s seat, placing the restraints back around her wrists.
“Trevor’s going to be pissed that I lost that outfit,” she sighed.
Cargo glanced up at her. “Yeah, that uniform’s a poor substitute. Barely makes it around your hips.”
“Yeah, maybe it’s time that I tried out a regular physique again,” Jessica replied as she attempted to get the jacket to hang properly over her narrow waist.
“Nah, you love being you,” Cargo chuckled. “Besides, having you around makes Cheeky feel more comfortable with being who she is.”
Jessica shrugged as she took her seat. She adjusted her jacket once more before shaking her head, triggering her long lavender locks to match Krissy’s light brown hair—thankful that she had picked up a hair-color mod after Iris kept making her grays fall out.
Maybe getting a mod to change skin color on demand should be next on her list. Every now and then it was useful to blend in.
Still, she didn’t need the disguise to last for long; just a few seconds to fool whoever came in next.
SABRINA BESIEGED
STELLAR DATE: 07.22.8938 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Sabrina, Docking Bay F34A Gisha Station
REGION: DSM Ring, Grey Wolf System
“Who’d have thought,” Cheeky said around a mouthful of almonds, “that when Sera recruited us years ago, we’d be pulling off crazy jobs like this—trying to steal wormhole tech from a mythical civilization we all thought was long gone?”
“Certainly not me,” Nance said from across the galley table, wearing her best hazsuit with the hood pulled off so she could eat. “Granted, I never really expected to spend any appreciable time out of a hazsuit either, so I’ve already had some life-altering changes.”
Erin said with a laugh.
“Hey!” Nance exclaimed
“I thought Tanis just ordered you to join up,” Cheeky said.
No one spoke for a minute, and Cheeky rose to brew a fresh pot of coffee.
Once the glorious black liquid began to drip into the pot—an archaic, but delicious way to brew it—she turned and looked at Nance, who was still sitting at the table, staring into the distance.
“Think about Thompson much?” Cheeky asked.
Nance let out a heavy sigh before pushing her long, brown hair aside to look at Cheeky.
“Every damn day. That bastard…after all that time. I thought we really had something. I guess I was just a convenient fuck, or something.”
“Nance! Don’t you let me catch you placing one iota of your self-worth in the hands of Thompson. Sure, he was crew; but he was always a self-centered ass,” Cheeky said, wanting to walk over to Nance and give the woman a hug.
She didn’t, though. Even after all these years, Nance still wasn’t big on physical contact. Especially when she was feeling out of sorts.
Nance swallowed and shook her head. “I’m not…at least I don’t think I am. It’s more that I thought maybe we could build a life together. You know, settle down somewhere. It didn’t have to be New Canaan; I would have been OK with somewhere else….”
“Thanks Erin, but I don’t think that I need relationship advice from an AI,” Nance grumbled.
“You do?” Cheeky asked, sorry that she had started this conversation, and eager for an opportunity to change the topic. “I didn’t think AI formed any sort of long-term partnership.”
“Doesn’t seem that different from human relationships,” Cheeky said. “The second part, at least.”
Heavy footsteps echoed down the passageway, and a moment later Trevor entered the galley and fell into a chair.
“Any word?” he asked.
“Nope,” Cheeky shook her head. “Not that we expected to hear anything this early on.”
“Sure is a crazy plan—one of our daringest…is that a word?” Nance added. “They go off, get captured—hoping it will lead them to getting a hackit in place—and we just sit here, waiting to see if those soldiers out there try to blow a hole in Sabrina.”
“I suppose it could be worse,” Trevor said with a shrug. “We could be in a ship without stasis shields.”
“We can’t just run the reactor?” Trevor asked.
“Inside a stasis shield, inside a station?” Cheeky responded. “We’ve nowhere to vent our heat. We’d bake.”
Trevor grinned and gestured at the soldiers in the bay, visible on one of the displays in the galley. “Yeah, but so would they. Bottom of the ship isn’t shielded. I bet we could use the grav drives to gently waft heat out of there.”
“Ideas?” Cheeky asked. “Once that shield goes down, those nice men and women out there are going to come knocking.”
“We could shoot out the bay doors, and vent our heat into space,” Nance suggested. “Sure, they won’t like it, but they are pointing guns at us.”
