by K. D. Austin
A GalMar attack fighter zoomed over the edge of the command ship. Hanna ducked involuntarily. But it didn’t notice the darkened GM-6. She clipped a tether line to the eyebolt beside the hatch.
“Let’s do this!” Hanna launched herself out of the air lock and into space. Stars and emptiness filled her visor. The tether line snapped taut just short of the hull of the Galactic Marines’ command ship. Hanna grunted and noted it had become tangled inside the hatch.
“Bloody Bova!” she cursed.
Hanna used the line to pull herself back toward the GM-6 and freed the tangle, aware of the precious seconds slipping past. Then she rotated herself and planted her feet on the bottom of the assault fighter and shot toward the GalMar ship. The communication array was a cityscape on the bottom of the hull. Hanna stared at the various spires, boxes, antennas, and dishes, wondering which one would give her the quickest access.
Deciding she’d waste more time trying to decide than simply finding an access panel, Hanna scanned the nearest spire and spotted a handy access panel at the base. Hanna popped open the panel and then glanced back at the GM-6. She could just see it around the communications array from this position. She hoped Salvor could see her, too, in case there was any trouble.
“Bingo!”
There were a handful of net terminal jacks inside the panel. Hanna yanked the extra connectors from the right sleeve of the EXS and plugged them in. A heads-up display floated in front of her eyes, flickering with numbers and images. She quickly blinked, and the numbers and images organized themselves into useable information.
“Now the fun begins.”
No matter how often Hanna hacked into the net, the excitement remained fresh. It was like having sex with someone for the first time every time.
Hanna paused. Her breath fogged the inside of her helmet’s visor. She stared at the Galactic Marine net on her HUD waiting for her to hack it. This was the moment of truth. If she entered into the system incorrectly, the GalMar security would recognize her as an intruder, and then the show would be over.
“Everything okay out there?” Salvor said over their secured connection in the net.
“Perfect,” she said.
Hanna glanced up at the battle raging in this area of space. Traces of ships’ engines and weapons flashed across the expanse. Hanna looked back toward Salvor. These pirates had saved her life probably for selfish reasons—they were pirates after all—but she still owed them. She wasn’t sure what Arden’s plan was, but there was only one way to find out.
Hanna began her hack into the Galactic Marine net. Surprisingly, for the galaxy’s most elite military force, their net was as easy to get into this time as it had been the last time Hanna had hacked it a few months ago. Admittedly, they had changed some protocols and added new protections, but they were all easily bypassed.
As Hanna initiated the hack, she put her customary fail-safes in place: switchbacks, dead ends, and false trails for the autodetection bots that trolled the net for intruders. Hanna also slipped in a couple custom virus bombs in case the other protections didn’t work. These would activate only if a bot alerted someone to the hack and that person began a trace. They were simple viruses that would only cause interference. This wasn’t a time to try to bring down the entire network since that would affect the pirates also in this close proximity.
With her defenses firmly in place, Hanna accessed the Galactic Marine system and quickly navigated into the tactical section. She patched the audio into her helmet speakers. Commands and updates bombarded her ears. Hanna didn’t like what she heard. The ion interference had completely dissipated at this point. The tide was turning in the Galactic Marines’ favor.
“Hurry, Hanna. Things are turning nasty,” Salvor said over the chatter as if he had read her mind.
Hanna was past the audio and into the heart of the GalMar system. She opened a new channel to The Scourge and Arden.
“I’m into the secure section of the GalMars’ net, Arden. What do you need me to do now?”
“Fantastic, Hanna. You’re a genius. I’m going to send you a little present for them.”
Hanna nodded knowingly. “A virus.”
“Yeah. Just make sure you break the link when you drop it. We don’t want it infecting our system.”
“No problem,” Hanna said, rolling her eyes. Like she didn’t know how to keep a virus from backtracking.
As she waited for Arden to send the virus, Hanna decided it would be wise to keep up with the battle to ensure she didn’t need to bail early. She piped a couple of different views of the battle onto her HUD. Ships whizzed around the Galactic Marine fleet. On one side The Scourge of the Stars hung in space surrounded by a cloud of GalMar ships.
Though her piracy experiences had garnered her little of space battle tactics, she knew the tide of the battle was rushing in the GalMars’ favor. The Galactic Marines had clearly recovered from the initial shock of the Scourge and the interference from the ion clouds. Since the Scourge hadn’t struck again, the emboldened battle cruisers were now moving closer for an all-out attack. Their one- and two-man assault craft were decimating the pirate squadron. Most of the remaining pirate vessels were retreating for the relative safety of the space station.
Arden’s voice cut across her thoughts of the battle. “You should be receiving the package now.”
Hanna pulled up her inbox and saw the virus Arden had sent waiting for her. “Got it,” she said, moving it quickly into the GalMars’ net and placing it inside their security systems. Making a few adjustments to the code Arden had sent her so that the GalMars’ net would believe it to be a native part of the system, Hanna planted the virus and cut the hack.
Looking at the one-sided devastation that the battle had become, Hanna hoped this virus did something drastic, like shutting down the entire GalMar system. Otherwise she’d have to devise her own plan of escape. She was grateful to Arden and his band for rescuing her and tending her wounds, but she wasn’t going to sacrifice herself for them at this point. If the virus didn’t stop the GalMars, she’d probably have to hitch a ride with the GalMars and hope they didn’t find her.
A plan on how to do that began forming in her head, but movement on her HUD interrupted her thoughts of escape. Hanna watched fascinated as two of the largest Galactic Marine battleships rotated toward the remainder of the fleet and opened fire. At that close range, any defense the other Galactic Marine ships had was ineffective. Four Galactic Marine ships exploded in as many seconds. Hanna got a double dose of the explosions as they overwhelmed her HUD and glared around the hull of the command ship.
Three other ships jumped to somnium-space, but they were too close to other ships. One ripped in half as it attempted the jump, the gravity from nearby ships having locked part of it in this specific location. Another disappeared into the faster-than-light zone but took parts of other ships with it.
In ten seconds only three functioning ships remained in the Galactic Marine fleet, and Hanna was standing on the hull of one of them. Hanna was staring at the HUD with her mouth agape.
“Get out of there, Hanna,” Arden commanded in her ear.
It took a second for her brain to catch up. She was sure she was going to be blown up at any second in the carnage. Arden’s virus was a lot more potent than she could’ve imagined. It must’ve hijacked their control and weapons systems, but Hanna had never heard of a virus that could do that.
“What?” she said as her mind finally realized Arden was talking to her.
“Get back to Salvor. You can’t stay out there any longer.”
Hanna didn’t waste any more time staring at the battle graphics. She popped out the jacks and bolted for the GM-6 and Salvor as fast as the space suit and lack of gravity would allow. Her stomach rolled, and the zero-g was not helping, but Hanna couldn’t stay on the hull of a ship that might explode any second.
“What did you do?” Salvor asked, wide-eyed, as Hanna slid back into the ship.
Hanna shook
her head and closed the access hatch. “Virus.”
“Virus? Well, strap in. This may get rough.”
Hanna had just barely grabbed the seat restraints when the GM-6 blasted off of the Galactic Marine command ship. They shot into open space just in time to be buffeted from both sides by massive explosions. The two Galactic Marine ships that had turned on the rest of their fleet attacked the command ship and then went nova themselves.
Hanna screamed as the ship was slammed by the first wave of debris. Salvor, on the other hand, crowed again and then spiraled deftly, avoiding the larger pieces of wreckage that now flew through the space around them. After the initial surprise strikes, Salvor somehow managed to avoid the debris of ten GalMar battle cruisers and numerous pirate and GalMar small fighters.
Once Hanna could speak again, she reached up and slapped Salvor on the back. “You are bova!”
“You ain’t wrong!” Salvor said and crowed again.
“Should we search for any EVAs?” Hanna asked, knowing it was standard practice for the better pirate bands to try to recover anyone who’d successfully ejected from a ship during a battle. The bands that didn’t attempt to recover its floating members were not ones Hanna ever wanted to belong to. These were the true cutthroat pirates that created the legends that washed over the galaxy like a breaking wave. Sometimes those stories were beneficial. Too often, though, they resulted in a situation like she’d just lived through where the Galactic Marines responded with excessive force. Of course, based on the outcome of this battle, maybe it hadn’t been excessive.
Salvor laughed at her question. “No need. We were the only two warm bodies out here. The rest of the Scourge’s ships were drones.
Hanna gaped. “We were being defended by drones? Against the GalMars?”
“Definitely not. The drones were just a distraction. I was defending us.”
Hanna nodded. She couldn’t deny that.
After they circled a few more times—Salvor refusing to believe there weren’t a few GalMar ships waiting to ambush them—Salvor dropped the GM-6 below a massive, blackened piece of a hull, and the pirates’ space station loomed before them.
Chapter 9
Sergeant Lance had successfully brought his prototype assault fighter right to the edge of the pirates’ space station—the stolen GalMar station, he corrected himself—and mag-clamped onto the side. This was the Galactic Marines’ station, and these filthy pirates had killed marines and polluted it. Anger boiled inside him to the point that he almost flipped off the ship’s stealth mode and attacked the station with all guns blazing. With a force of will, he managed to get himself under control. Lance felt the same rage that had burned in him when he’d confronted the pirate girl back on Benn.
He didn’t understand why he’d been so angry lately, especially at pirates. He’d been cleaning pirates out of the galaxy since he’d joined the Galactic Marines, but lately every time he confronted them, he had a hard time controlling himself. He worried a bit that his CO would discover his sudden urge to kill and take him off active duty or, worse, assign him to net watch—the mind-numbing chore of sorting through the endless traffic on the galaxy-wide network searching for trigger words.
Now wasn’t the time to analyze himself. He had to get on board the space station and shut down this pirate operation, and he couldn’t do that sitting inside this prototype GalMar ship. He knew the sister of this ship had been in the station when it was stolen, but he doubted the pirates had the ability to use its stealth mode if they were even dumb enough to try to fly it against the Dragon Squadron.
Lance fastened the helmet on the pressure suit he wore and popped the cockpit. Pushing himself straight up, he moved free of the ship. He felt the atmosphere disappear as he crossed through the inertia field. With ease he maneuvered himself the ten meters to the access hatch he’d identified from the station’s blueprints. He plugged the jacks from his pressure suit into the panel and sent a standard GalMar override code to the lock, and the hatch opened outward with a slight outgassing, exposing an unused garbage chute.
Lance only had to get a meter into the chute before the pull of the station’s artificial gravity dropped him onto his shoulder on the wall that had been on his left. He’d guessed incorrectly which way the station would be oriented at this point. However, he quickly righted himself and reached back to close the hatch. He left his helmet on, though, because full atmosphere wouldn’t kick in until he neared the top of the garbage chute.
He’d find Hanna Seldon and determine why she was so important that The Scourge of the Stars band had risked so much to rescue her from him. Then Hanna and the rest of the pirates would regret the day they attacked Sergeant Lance.
Lance had nearly reached the top of the chute when the chatter on the Galactic Marine net went crazy. He instinctively adjusted the feed to filter everything but the communications from command. What he heard made no sense. The Galactic Marine ships were destroying each other. Was there a mutiny in progress or something much more sinister? Could this band of pirates have infiltrated their ranks? It seemed impossible, but Lance had no better explanation. There was nothing he could do for his comrades besides finish his mission. If the pirates were somehow responsible—and he figured they had to be somehow—it was just one more thing they had to pay for.
Chapter 10
Arden stood in the small hangar waiting for Salvor to return with Hanna. The first mate brought the GM-6 into the docking bay a little too hot, as usual.
“That was bova, boss! What’s up now? Where do you need me?” Salvor popped out of the cockpit before the docking robots had even secured the ship.
Arden shook his head at Salvor. The guy had just flown solo against the deadliest pilots in the galaxy, had nearly been blown up, and smiled like it happened every day and now focused on business. This was what made him invaluable even if he could be impulsive at times.
“Get to the bridge and supervise the cleanup operation. We need to move the station to new coordinates ASAP.”
Salvor gave Arden a mock salute and a wink and darted off for the lift. Arden shook his head at the exuberant pirate.
He stood outside the GM-6 as Hanna shed the clunky pressure suit and slowly made her way out of the ship. He admired the holographic clothes she had chosen. The black pants hugged her hips easily, reminding him of how they looked without the hologram. He was impressed by how the projected shirt even adjusted as Hanna’s nipples stiffened in the cold air of the hangar. He had a strong urge to reach out and touch her ass as she drew near, but restrained himself. This girl definitely did something to him, and he hoped to do something to her before the day was over.
“You did great!” Arden smiled at her, unable to keep his mind from wandering to thoughts of what she really wore under that projected outfit. Those thoughts brought back the amount of time he’d had to admire her naked body. Even badly injured as she’d been when they’d brought her on board, her beauty had been obvious. Arden particularly enjoyed the flawlessness of her porcelain skin. “I’d say you’ve lied about the extent of your talent, Hanna. I’ve known many infamous hackers who couldn’t manipulate a system like you just did.” He leaned down and kissed her lightly on her cheek. “Amazing!”
Color bloomed on Hanna’s cheeks, but she remained all business outwardly. Arden smiled inwardly at that.
“That was some virus, Arden. I’d love to know how it worked.” Her emerald eyes gleamed with interest and excitement. Arden decided he could never get enough of her looking as flushed and excited as she did now. He’d definitely found what interested Hanna. If she found the virus this fascinating, then some of the other things he hoped to show her should really turn her on.
“Come on. I want to show you how I made that virus. With your hacking skills, I think you could do even more than what you saw today.”
Hanna’s eyes widened with a look of hungry desire. Arden hoped some of that hunger would be directed at him soon. He slipped his arm under her elbow and led H
anna from the hangar. The feel of her bare skin against his caused a slight stir below his belt. She obviously hadn’t learned how to use the tactile settings on the EXS. He decided he’d clue her in about that a little later. Right now he enjoyed the feel of her bare flesh against his. He hoped to feel more of her skin against his before the night ended.
He guided her toward the lifts. They rode toward the center of the station, where his quarters were.
Chapter 11
Lance crept through service shafts working toward his goal. He still wasn’t sure what had happened to the Galactic Marine force, but he couldn’t raise anyone. It was also clear that his unit hadn’t taken control of the space station. He’d briefly accessed the station’s net chatter and could tell the pirates planned to move the station through somnium-space very soon. That gave him hope that the Galactic Marines were still out there, but just in case, he had moved to plan B.
Unfortunately, that meant he had to reach the far side of the station. If he could leave the service shafts, he could access any of the Hoppers—the short-range teleporters—throughout the station, and he could get there in seconds. It was still prototype tech, but Lance had seen it work. Teleportation couldn’t be accomplished across distances of more than a few hundred meters currently, due to the power required, but it allowed for quick movement through the massive station. He was tempted to move out of the service tunnels and use one, but he couldn’t risk it. The GalMars’ intel on the Scourge was sketchy at best. He didn’t know if there were a handful or thousands of pirates on the station. Lance voted for somewhere in the middle. He believed it had to be a larger band to have stolen and secured this station. If they were extremely large, though, the Galactic Marines would have heard much more about them. He’d have to do this the old-fashioned way, with muscle. He began the arduous task of working his way through the service corridors to the bridge. He estimated he had about forty kilometers to go.
