by Rachel Aukes
“But Sylvian’s not here right now, is she?” Throttle asked.
“No, but—”
“And I don’t have time. I have a call with Punch in a few minutes.”
Eddy huffed. “I can try, but unless it’s plug-and-play, I can’t make any guarantees.”
“I could help,” Rusty chimed in.
Throttle’s brow rose. “You can build new screens without human interaction?”
“Sylvian has repaired all of my artificial decisioning systems. And Eddy installed a naive Bayse router, which has greatly improved my rationalization processes. You can trust me with making nearly any changes to my own systems.”
Throttle frowned at Eddy. “Where’d you pick up new hardware for Rusty?”
Eddy waved her off. “Oh, you know, I find things here and there.”
Her gaze narrowed. “You didn’t have the bots steal anything from the Wu Zetian, did you?”
He looked affronted. “No, I did not. You told me the seed ship was off-limits.” A smug expression curved his lips upward. “But you didn’t say anything about the marshal’s ship. You know, finders keepers and all that sort of thing.”
Her lips parted. She was about to reprimand him, but she realized it would do no good. Also, Antonov was likely dead and certainly didn’t need any fancy tech anymore. When she realized that, she said, “Good thinking, Eddy. I suppose it’s not stealing if the guy’s already dead.”
Eddy held up a finger. “And it helps Rusty improve his processing power tenfold.”
Throttle glanced up at the camera in the ceiling. “The data’s in the message from Sylvian. Have at it, Rusty.”
“I have identified the data files and am importing them now. This will be a nice change of pace from my usual task monitoring activities, and it tests my upgraded cognitive processes.”
Throttle turned back to Eddy. “You got off easy on that.”
“Good. Now, I need to get back to my bot project.”
She cocked her head. “What bot project?”
“I’m working with Rusty to customize each of his bots. For example, I’m setting up one bot—its name is Bonkers because its directional gyros are a bit clumsy—to be a scanner. We’ll be able to send it out anywhere and have it look for a specific something, such as signs of life or hints of explosives, you name it. I’m also planning to customize another bot with a photon blaster so I’ll never need to carry a gun.” He grinned. “I call that one Blaster, of course.”
“Of course,” Throttle echoed while rolling her eyes. She held up her hand. “I do not trust a bot with any sort of weapon. Is that clear?”
“But we could send in the bots to take down the pirates while we stay here where it’s safe.”
“No.”
Eddy frowned. “Why not?”
“Because that’s a horrible idea. Bots are for mechanical support. They are not battle drones.”
“They could be.”
“No.”
Eddy eyed her for a length, then lifted his chin. “You know, you should really learn to listen to your elders. Trust my knowledge and experience.”
Throttle was taken aback. “Uh, what are you talking about? I’m two years older than you.”
“Not anymore,” he said. “I am older than you now. You were in cryosleep for seven years. I was never in cryosleep, so that makes me five years older than you.”
She rolled her eyes. “Fine. You’re older, but that doesn’t make you my elder.”
“It does, quite literally.”
She waved him off. “Fine. Consider the age thing a win, because there is no way I’m allowing a bot on Free Station. If anyone hacked a bot, they might be able to access Rusty’s systems. That’s not a risk I’m willing to take.”
He turned and spoke over his shoulder as he walked away. “Fine, but I bet you’ll regret not having a bot with you when you and Finn find yourselves outnumbered by pirates.”
Chapter Twenty
Chief lay on his back in the cramped cargo hold of the escape pod while he thought through his plans. He’d been waiting for four hours—had slept for three of those hours—for responses from Punch and the Red Dynasty and couldn’t wait any longer for messages that would likely never come.
The Jaders wouldn’t risk staying on Free Station for long. Once they stripped Free Station’s armory and whatever else they were stealing, they’d leave and destroy the station and everyone on board.
He remained in the escape pod because he struggled in coming up with a good plan. Putting his people first meant getting them off Free Station, but if East and her cronies made off with everything from the armory, they had everything they needed to hunt down and slaughter his people—along with anyone else who’d dare to defy them.
He had no other choice than to put the lives of his people at risk in a counteroffensive attack to retake Free Station. Anna East had essentially declared war on the Galactic Peacekeepers, and he was going to give her and her Jaders the fight of their lives. He had the workings of a plan. It wasn’t a great plan. Hell, it wasn’t even a good plan. But it was a plan that could work, and that was better than anything else he had.
His greatest challenge was that his people were all behind locked doors, and he had no way to free them without gaining access to the command center level, which was heavily guarded. Anna East, no thanks to her mole Pete Antonov, had known exactly how to cripple Free Station with minimal risk to their own safety. That meant that Chief couldn’t coordinate with his people to launch a massive counteroffensive. Instead, he had developed a plan that could succeed with only a small group. A kill group.
A distant noise startled Chief and he pulled himself into a seated position and listened through the cracks in the floor grates above his head. Voices, too far away for him to make out the words, but at least two men were talking…and their voices were growing nearer.
He took care to lift the grate without making a sound. His left arm protested, but he’d injected a local anesthetic near the wound when it’d began to throb too much. He set the grate aside, stood—giving his muscles a chance to adjust to being vertical again—and pulled himself up and onto the pod’s floor. He was on his feet in a flash, unholstered one of his pistols, and moved silently, stepping toe to heel, toward the open door.
With the escape pod door open, the newcomers could hear Chief as easily as he could now hear their conversation, and from what he could make of it, they were clearly Jaders. As they drew closer, their conversation became clearer.
“…got me thinkin’ we ain’t gettin’ paid for this here job.”
“Fo’ shore. I ain’t seen no credits ’round here. All I seen’s are guns and lots of ’em gettin’ loaded. I like guns as much as any man, but I got mouths to feed. The ole lady’s getting nasty ’bout it, too.”
“I care none ’bout the guns. And there ain’t shit in these here tunnels. I just wanna get paid for my work. I think I’ll have a chat wit’ Skully Pete ’bout doin’ what’s right.”
“Yeah, right. Like you’d go talkin’ to Skully—”
Chief had seen two shadows before he saw the pair of pirates. He raised his pistol and fired as soon as they stepped into view. He cut off the pirate’s sentence with a shot to the head. The second man’s eyes went wide. He went to swing his rifle around, and Chief cautioned him.
“Drop it,” Chief ordered.
The Jader dropped his rifle as though it burned him and raised his hands. “Don’t shoot, man. I’m unarmed.”
“Are there others in this tunnel?” Chief asked.
“Nope. Jus’ Tobes and me, that’s all.”
“What are you doing in the tunnels?”
“We’s jus’ walkin’ the tunnels. Seein’ what we’s be seein’. Lookin’ for any good stuff worth takin’ before we cut out,” the Jader answered.
Chief watched the man, who looked like he hadn’t met a razor or a shower in far too long and had the restlessness of a drug addict. The man didn’t seem to recognize Chi
ef, though that didn’t surprise him. Most pirates were grunts, little more than slave labor picked up from somewhere that made pirating a better occupation than whatever they were doing. His gaze narrowed on the man. “When are you cutting out?” he asked, using the man’s terminology.
“Soon. Please let me go. I won’ tell no one ’bout you.”
“How soon?”
The man shrugged. “Dun know. Four hours, maybe five. We’s suppose to be back for roll call at eight hundred on the dot.”
“Good to know,” Chief said and shot the man between the eyes.
Chief had lunged back into the pod by the time the man collapsed. He hustled down into the cargo hold to grab one of the rifles. He swapped out the battery for a fresh one and climbed back up. He then grabbed a chime suit and pulled it on as quickly as he could manage. Four hours wasn’t nearly enough time left to stop the pirates from blowing up the station. He had to adjust his plan.
He stepped out of the pod and into the tunnel. At the panel on the wall, he entered his credentials. A light above the door flashed red, and the door closed. A second later, he heard the whoomph of the pod ejecting, and he found some humor in knowing that the action would distract the pirates from Chief’s next move. He entered an override code. He grabbed onto the rail the instant before the door opened, and the vacuum of space sucked out the two bodies and the air from the tunnel. He pulled himself through the open doorway, grabbing onto a bar on the other side to hold him in place while he closed the door. While a breach in the tunnels would cause problems for the Jaders, it would cause just as many problems for his people.
As soon as the door closed, the wind pulling at him ceased and he let go of the station. Using the magnetic propulsion system on his suit, he navigated around the outside of Free Station, careful to remain within a few feet of the hull and careful to avoid any cameras or windows. He went halfway around the station and came to a stop near a window of one of the station’s smaller wings. It was the only place he knew there’d be at least twenty people holed up together and with access to an airlock.
The bunkhouse for new recruits.
He pulled himself closer and peeked through the window and into the bunkhouse. Inside, he saw what looked like the full class gearing up for war. He winced, knowing that East would also know exactly what the cadets were doing by spying through their Atlas chips. Every Peacekeeper, following their sixth week of training, received an Atlas chip. If the pirates had attacked Free Station just one week earlier, Chief would’ve had twenty-four Peacekeepers without Atlas. Instead, he had to risk drawing East’s attention even more to the bunkhouse.
He tapped on the glass. When no one looked, he tapped harder. It was hard to move quickly in space, so he had to initiate his grav boots to keep from knocking himself back.
One of the cadets nearest the window turned and swung up a rifle. The rest of the group turned to Chief. He held out his hands in a show of peace and hoped none of them were stupid enough to fire at the hull. One of the team leads stepped forward, said something, and the cadet lowered his rifle.
Chief nodded and motioned vigorously to the airlock. He hurried to the airlock, reaching it as it opened, and jumped inside. The door closed behind him, and he went to the panel to enter his override code on the station lockdown to release the entire wing from the lockdown protocol. As soon as he did, the inner airlock door opened, with barely enough time to pressurize the small room.
All three team leads—red, blue, and yellow—stood before him. Weaved between them were cadets holding their rifles steady on Chief.
Chief spoke calmly. “Cadets, the Jaders have hijacked Atlas and is using your chips to spy on all activities. Putting them in sleep mode doesn’t seem to work. You can power down your chips with the diagnostic wand in the bunkhouse med center.”
“How do we know we can believe you?” Blue team leader, Roxy, asked.
Yellow team leader, Numi, frowned. “Who are you?”
“They’re watching and listening,” Chief said, hoping they’d give him the benefit of the doubt.
Red team leader, Yale, turned to face his team. “Parks, grab the wand.”
If East hadn’t figured out it was Chief yet, he didn’t want to continue speaking to give her more opportunity to identify him. He knew that she’d send her Jaders after him if she knew where he was.
Parks returned with a long black wand.
“Get yourself first, Parks; then get all of us,” Yale ordered.
Parks did as instructed. The diagnostic wand was a medical scanner that was used to identify injuries. The wand’s signal was disrupted by Atlas, and two features had been added to the wand’s single feature of Scan: Atlas Off and Atlas On.
The room was in a nervous silence as the cadet turned off each Atlas chip. Chief hoped that East wasn’t able to turn on Atlas chips from a distance, but the truth was, he relied on specialists too much and didn’t know enough when it came to Atlas.
The instant the final cadet was scanned, Roxy asked, “Let’s start over. Who are you, partner?”
Chief removed his helmet. As soon as he had it off, all of the cadets’ features slackened with recognition.
“Chief Roux,” Yale said.
Chief gave a small nod and then looked across the youthful faces, with a couple of middle-aged cadets sprinkled throughout. “I apologize for the entrance. However, the pirates have us at a severe disadvantage. We need to secure the bunkhouse.”
“Yellow team has this.” Numi spoke, then turned to her team. “Jake, Punk, and Emily, you three make sure the door is locked and barricaded.”
The trio of cadets took off running across the bunkhouse.
A beep sounded. Chief spun around to see the inner airlock door open. Another beep sounded at the outer airlock.
“Grab onto something!” he yelled before he rushed to pull his helmet on. The outer airlock began to open as he lunged for the control panel. Wind pulled at him as he reached for the panel. Objects blew past him as he worked the controls. The system accepted his code once more, and he closed the airlock.
The wind ceased abruptly, and he found the cadets scattered, still clinging to one another and to benches and bunks screwed to the floors.
“Ronnie!” someone yelled, and several cadets ran to the airlock.
Chief turned and looked out. Clothes, weapons, and other debris floated in the black. Farther out, he saw a human shape. His jaw clenched. Without a suit, it was already too late for the cadet. He lowered his head and turned back to the room. “We will mourn for Cadet Young later. Right now, we’re under attack. They’ve opened the airlock once. We have to assume they’ll open it again to try to kill us all so we can’t go against them. I need two volunteers to stand guard at the bunkhouse and airlock doors at all times.”
Two young men stepped forward. “We’ll hold down the bunkhouse,” one of them said.
Roxy spoke. “Gregg and Nance both excel in the small arms drills and aren’t my strongest spacewalkers. They’ll do right by you.”
Chief nodded at the two volunteers. “Be ready for anything. If we lose the bunkhouse, we have nowhere to fall back, so you have the authority to do whatever it takes to defend the bunkhouse. Do you understand?”
The pair of cadets bore devilish grins, and Chief suspected they already had a dangerous idea or two.
A broadcast over the speakers made Chief cringe. It was Anna East’s voice.
“I can see you. I see and hear everything,” she crooned. “You think that by powering down your personal chips that I can’t see, but I can. There is nowhere you can hide that I can’t see you. This is my warning to you. As long as you remain where you are and don’t try anything foolish, I’ll leave you alone. But if you think to come after me or my Jaders, you will die. I’ve already killed eighteen Peacekeepers. Oh, make that nineteen. I saw the body floating outside. Free Station is mine. You live at my mercy.”
“She’s wrong,” Chief said. “She can only see and hear through Atlas
chips and cameras. There are blind spots on Free Station that we’ll leverage. But she’s right in that she’s killed our people, and I plan to keep her from killing more.” He inhaled. “I’m leading a counteroffensive to take back Free Station. This is a volunteer mission. I’ll take everyone I can, except for Gregg and Nance, who’ll remain back to watch the airlock and defend the bunkhouse.”
“And you want us to help?” Yale asked, dubious.
“All the marshals are locked down in various places across the station, which is crawling with Jader pirates,” Chief answered.
“We’re the only ones you could get to,” Numi said.
“Yes,” Chief said. “You may still be only a third through basic training, but you’re all Peacekeepers, and I need you. But this is a very dangerous assignment, so I’m only taking volunteers. Who wants to help me take back Free Station?”
Everyone yelled their affirmation. He didn’t see a single person remain quiet or who didn’t raise at least one hand. He hadn’t expected such a robust response, especially since they’d just lost a fellow student. These cadets had been through seven weeks of Peacekeeper training—long enough to have seen the videos and have read the horror stories. He trusted them to make their own decisions, though he knew that inexperience often brought a sense of invincibility. These cadets would learn very soon that they weren’t invincible.
When the noise settled, Yellow team leader, Numi, spoke. “We’ve already been preparing, Chief. We’re ready to move at your command. We’re going to take back Free Station, Chief.”
He cocked his head. “Tell me what you’ve planned.”
Numi began to speak, but Yale interrupted. “My team’s going to the power core. We’re going to cut the power.”
“Then all three teams are going after the Jaders. They can’t see in the dark, and we’ll have our night goggles. Each team will start on a different level, and we’ll work our way to the top of Free Station.”
Chief didn’t need to ask for details. It was a textbook scenario they’d been taught and had practiced during their training sessions. He held up his finger. “It’s not a bad idea, but we have complications. The Jaders plan to blow up Free Station upon their departure. They likely plan to use explosives, but I don’t know where they’ve been placed. Free Station encompasses over forty-five cubic miles, which we don’t have the resources to search. That means preventing their departure is our priority. If we can keep them here, we keep them from destroying the station.
