by M. D. Cooper
As predicted the engineers monitoring the fields 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. It wasn’t the sort of thing she carried with her, but she and Helen had assembled it from parts and materials they had picked up along the way.
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 service 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 and 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 and 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 hi
s 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 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. 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.
She fired a few low shots, trying to take out the enemy without causing fatalities. 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, and were 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.
The guards were spilling out onto the docks, unable to find any sign of Sera in the warehouse. The dockhands, and the captain with which they were arguing, reported that they hadn’t seen anyone, and most of the guards returned to the warehouse to sweep it again.
The captain strengthened his argument that the docks were clear, and, given their own admission that they had not seen anything, the dockhands had no choice but to resume loading the ship. Sera’s pallet was last and Helen gently woke her before it began moving. It wouldn’t do to have Sera startled awake and give away her location.
As the pallet was crawling up the ramp, a shout came over the docks.
“Stop that! What do you think you’re doing?” The voice was Rebecca’s.
“Loading my ship,” the captain responded.
“We’re not loading ships; we’re looking for a fugitive.”
“You’ve got a thousand people who can hunt for one person. I’ve got a schedule to keep.”
“How do you know she hasn’t gotten onto your ship?”
“Because I’ve been standing here the whole time arguing with these dockhands to get the thing loaded up. I’m already a half an hour behind. This stuff sells for a lot more when it’s fresh, you know.”
Rebecca and the captain yelled at one another for several minutes, the new Mark leader succumbing to the captain’s increasing ire after he had the ship’s AI do a full scan of the vessel, which showed no one on board but his crew.
Sera’s pallet was finally stowed in a hold, which by the smell of it, contained a veritable cornucopia of produce. At least she wasn’t going to starve.
The ship spent an agonizing ten minutes going through pre-flight checks and reactor power up.
Minutes later the station’s grav fields backed the ship out of its docking slot and into the dark layer. Not long after, Sera felt the vessel transition into normal space and then begin to accelerate for an eventual transition to FTL.
Sera pushed the crates over her head aside, and pulled herself up. She covered the hole back up, carefully moving the crates to their former positions. It wouldn’t do to have anyone find the CriEn module she had worked so hard to retrieve.
She slipped down to the deck and wobbled slightly. Then waves of dizziness and nausea washed over her body. She fell to the ground, ignoring the tingling sensations her new skin sent through her body.
Sera eyed the crates filling the compartment. Food to be sure, but likely no wate
r, and she was feeling a powerful thirst.
She sighed and ran a hand down her black, gleaming thigh.
FAIR TRADE
STELLAR DATE: 07.15.8927 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Sabrina, PeterSil EK Belt Mining Platform
REGION: Silstrand System, Silstrand Alliance Space
At the outer rim of the system’s Kuiper Belt, the PeterSil EK mining platform whipped around its host star at just over twenty thousand kilometers per hour. Cheeky carefully guided Sabrina across several million kilometers of the Silstrand system, until the ship’s velocity was perfectly matched to the platform’s.
Tanis couldn’t help but be impressed by the skill Cheeky displayed.
Many pilots needed to resort to hard burns, or corrections to make their final approaches, but Sabrina’s pilot eased her starship through the system like it was a dance to which she knew all the moves.
When they got close, the station focused a gravity wave on the ship and gently pulled it in, before latching on with a physical grapple and securing the ship.
Cargo informed the station that they were interested in making a purchase from S&H Defensive Armaments. Station control passed the message along, and, when pressures were matched and the cargo hatch opened, a representative from the firm was waiting to meet them.
Tanis stepped onto the merchant dock with Cargo, soaking in the station’s vibrant atmosphere as freight haulers, passenger cars, and foot traffic moved past their berth in a chaotic cacophony.
It was such a shock after the days spent on the relative quiet of Sabrina. She realized that, though the Victorian stations and platforms had become crowded in their later years, she hadn’t seen this type of bustling commerce since the Intrepid’s final days on the Cho, in orbit around Jupiter.
Despite the fact that the platform had the word ‘mining’ in its name, little of the freight she saw looked to have anything to do with extracting or refining ore. From what she could tell, much of the trade here was in defensive or offensive armament.
