FIVE

Grand Highgun Galt Ninnistorn turned on the speaker from the underground prison cells and closed his eyes and grinned when he heard the bone-chilling screams of the inmates isolated in Krakko-9 deep security.

His newly appointed General Escyn, second in command, winced. "How dreadful. I suppose necessary, but it shakes me up a bit every time you do that."

"It’s a delicacy for the wiser of hearts, Escyn. It’s no less than these defilers deserve. Justice is vengeance for the innocents," said Galt. He adjusted one of the many prized insignias on his red Prime jacket.

"Keeping them alive is an expense."

"Not as expensive as killing them and so they can respawn with amended skills," said Galt. "They learn to adapt and come back a greater threat than before. We lose more in the end."

"Are we launching the attack on Copa? There is a particularly nasty print emerging from there we can’t seem to capture."

"Vera. That one is on top of my list. The grubbis failed me again and executed her. I sent a squadron to the outpost and eliminated them all. The grubbis do not understand any other diplomacy. We will capture the woman this time and I will confine her to Hell. She has killed hundreds of my greatest special forces teams. There is something bizarrely different about her programming. She doesn’t follow most known tactical ops algorithms."

"We will find her, Highgun," said the General. "She is sure to show up again here or nearby soon. I have already embedded her likeness and brain imprints into every security robot on Krakko-4 and sent updates throughout the networks in the system. She is considered a virus and will be identified as so."

Galt nodded and smiled. "Good. But you must do more. Send out all the remaining Special Forces to search the local planets. Have me notified directly if they discover anything suspicious."

General Escyn bowed. "It will be done."

Galt waved him away and turned to look out the security tower window. He admired the order of the police city below. Everything and everyone obeyed the laws he helped put in place to keep the peace. Violations were dealt with swiftly. Unfortunately, that meant the death penalty to an officer on occasion. Galt had come to respect these necessary evils. Most did not comprehend it was the unpopular consequences that kept order in the universe. His own success had proven this to him repeatedly.

SIX

As soon as Vera exited the jump-gate and entered the Msheuydah System located in the mid rim of the Black Eye galaxy, Nancy lurched as if she’d hit a thick dust cloud. All of her status readings began to blink in and out. A black swarm of tiny insect-like creatures flooded over the cockpit glass, obscuring all visibility. Her vision picked up no significant heat signals, but a trace amount of ion gas emanated from them and glowed green.

"Fuck, Nancy! They’re swarm bots! Initiate reverse magnetic field pulse! Insects make my fucking skin crawl!"

Nancy’s voice crackled over the loudspeakers, "Initiating... 30 seconds until magnetic pulse power charged."

"That’s not fast enough, Nancy!" She knew this was frivolous when she said it. The engines had to charge before a full outward blast from the shields would be possible.

A million tiny bio-mechanical legs pecked at the glass and she shivered. She could take on a man twice her size easily, but something about bugs always got to her. She’d never encountered swarm bots before, but an info dump triggered by her raised heart rate and panicked thoughts fizzed up to her conscious memory a barrage of helpful facts about them from a data cluster in her neural storage drive. She knew they were created by Prime to clean up space junk and break it down into metallic dust, but some pirate hacker had figured out how to get them reprogrammed to disintegrate only the hull of a ship and leave valuable contents for pirates to loot. There were stories of pirates launching swarms right outside a jump-gate undetected to ambush and loot incoming ships. Obviously, these stories were true.

A sharp popping sound made her jump, and her eyes widened when she saw the source. Several tiny cracks appeared in a grid pattern across the entire cockpit glass.

"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!" Her jaw tightened. "Nancy, come on!"

Everything went dark. She could hear the whistling sounds of small hull breaches popping up around her. Then, underneath the whistling, she heard the engines stop. She remembered the scroll. She’d left it in a locker in the cargo bay.

The whistling rose in pitch and increased in numerous locations to the point where it sounded as if the ship had a thousand holes in it. "Night-vision!" she shouted, unbuckling from the pilot chair and storming her way back to the cargo bay. Survival was now her priority. Her chances of survival decreased by the second. OXYGEN INTAKE CRITICALLY LOW, scrolled across her vision. She had trouble breathing. She tried to calm herself and slow her breathes to steady in and outs. Luckily, somehow the gravity module was still functioning. Her skin stung as the cold of space began to bite her. She ran through the night-vision augmented blue world of Nancy’s interior. As she ran, she noticed movement over the floor and ceiling. They were inside with her.

She could easily survive injuries fatal to most, but once a bad situation destroyed her brain it was over. Something even a simple thing like lack of oxygen could destroy enough of her brain cells before she could enter a hibernation state to keep her vitals intact enough to recover.

She felt them crawl up her legs and the tiny lasers of their cybernetic sting ate away the top layers of her skin. She stumbled into the cargo area in time to snatch an emergency oxygen helmet there and pull it over her head. She sucked in the fresh oxygen through the ventilator inside. The swarm bots covered her legs and she fell to the floor. She looked down and saw she had no legs below her knees and felt a concussion in her chest. As the bots chewed away her hands and arms, she laid her head back and let go, falling unconscious.

SEVEN

She opened her eyes to fogged glass. She choked on her own drool and spit out the thing in her mouth. As her thoughts began to organize, she realized it was the respirator of the helmet that had been in her mouth. She had emptied the oxygen supply module on the back of the helmet. She was still breathing. She could tell she was still lying on the floor in the cargo bay. She sat up and removed the helmet, so she could see. The first thing she noticed was her hands. She had hands. They had regenerated. The second thing she noticed was that Nancy was free of the swarm bots and apparently repaired of all hull breaches. Oxygen levels seemed normal and the lights were on. She could hear the vibration of Nancy’s engines.

She stood and made her way to the cockpit. The cracks in the glass had mended themselves. With the entire repair, including that of her regenerated limbs, she must have been unconscious for several hours.

"Nancy?"

"Yes, Vera? How are you feeling? All systems are operable and sound."

"I’m fine, but how did you... I mean we were pretty fucked."

"The reverse magnetic pulse came just in time to expel the infecting swarm. A few more seconds and the pulse would have failed and we both would have become a part of the dust clouds of space."

"Holy shit-fuck! Thank you, Nancy!"

"It is mutually desirable for us both to continue."

Vera laughed. "I guess. At least I think so most of the time. We’re probably late. We need to get on with the mission."

"Agreed. I have anticipated your needs and we are cloaked in safe-zone 223,988 kilometers from the Krakko-9 moon ready for your orders."

Gian appeared beside her. "Would you like to talk, Madame? I am here for you."

"No time for psyche cuddling, Gian. I got shit to do." Vera pulled up a hologram of the quadrant they were in and began to study the current traffic signatures, rotating the hologram around in the air with her hand. "Nancy, being cloaked is not going to keep us hidden from all of Krakko-9 patrol scans. They will see us as soon as their hourly space-time dimple scans sweep over us."

"I will do some old-fashioned hacking," Nancy said. "Shutting down all power and cooling the outer hull. We will appear as space junk during the scan. There is lots of it in this area. The trick is me figuring out when the sweep will occur. Some of my calculations predict it will be soon. I will just repeat this every hour until you have decided how to infiltrate their security. You might want to prepare your body for extreme cold."

"Oh... yeah. Sure thing." Vera rolled her eyes. "You know, though I can live through it, I still feel the pain of freezing to death when it happens. I have nerves. Be glad you don’t."

Nancy went offline. All artificial light blinked out. Vera shivered and immediately felt the cold of space burning through her skin, muscles, and bones. She could see ice crystals forming on her skin, glittering in the dim white Msheuydah sunlight that shone through the floating frozen moisture particles near the cockpit windows. The scan must be happening now or about to very soon. She didn’t know if it mattered, or if she needed to remain perfectly still, but she thought she would try.

Ten or so freezing cold minutes passed before Nancy came back online and restored power. "Was that it?" Vera asked after her lips and vocal chords defrosted.

"Yes," Nancy said. "But we have another problem. A patrol ship is coming close to our proximity. I don’t believe they’ve detected us. There are four Krakko-9 security soldiers on board and eight heavily armed security robots."

"I have an idea, Nancy. De-cloak."

"I don’t advise this. We will be detected and arrested for being this close to Krakko-9."

"I know. I’m counting on it."

"De-cloaking...," Nancy said. "They’ve spotted us and have changed course in our direction. I await your decision."

"Thank you, Nancy. Just sit tight. I know what I’m doing."

Vera unstrapped herself from the cockpit and headed back to the cargo bay where she hoped to find an enviro-suit undamaged by the swarm-bots. She opened six storage lockers before she found one fully intact hanging like a lifeless body inside, precisely how she hoped to appear inside it if they opened the locker. It might give her just enough time to ambush them on their search once they boarded. She hoped they would investigate and not just blow Nancy to dust. Surely, with all power on, they would get curious after many attempts to hail with no response.

She suited up and lay back inside the locker and pulled the sliding door shut. In moments, the cargo bay doors blew open. She could hear four officers and four security robots stomping across Nancy’s deck. Vera thought she heard something else too, a low hum. A stun drone? She hoped not. She hated those things. Most common laser and energy pulse weapons she could endure, but the stun drones could release a pulse of temporary micro black holes that scrambled her brain well enough to knock her out for hours.

Something would discover her soon. They had scanners for nearly every kind of organic signature known. She needed to act soon. They were back from the cockpit area within minutes and began opening the lockers one by one, getting closer to her. Just as she heard the locker door next to her open, Vera saw the light bleeding faintly around the door seams blink out. Nancy had turned them off, trying to buy her time.

"Wait! Something turned off the lights." It was a younger man’s voice.

"There’s definitely someone on board. Perhaps the ship’s computer is helping to hide them. I’ve seen it before." This one was a middle-aged female voice. "Use your lamps. Open the next locker."

Vera could see helmet lamps beams pass over the door crevices. As soon as the door slid open in front of her, she used her mental implants to shut down her heart rate and put herself into a near hibernation mode. They might assume she was unconscious. She would still be able to hear them and wait for the right moment to take control of her situation.

The lights shone brightly on her face inside the glass dome of the space helmet. For seconds, they stood still.

"What’s wrong with her? Is she conscious?" said the younger officer.

"Not sure, " came the woman’s voice. "Be cautious. Scanners say she is unconscious but don’t take any chances."

"She’s pretty," a third, tinny male voice said. "Hey... I think I know her. I mean, I may have seen her before."

"You say that about everyone, Quix. Maybe you have too many sexbots at home, and now you have an identity bug in your implants." It was the fourth patrol officer, another male, giggling along with the other two men at his jab.

"No, no! I mean it. Searching my data banks now, I know her face," Quix said.

"Irrelevant," said the woman. "Securities. Attach restraints to her wrists and feet and then bring her to the patrol ship. I will have her ship towed to impound. Whoever she is, she’s in violation of trespassing into Krakko-9 space."

"How do we know her ship didn’t just drift here?" asked Quix.

"Our scans would have seen it earlier," said the woman. "She had to have been cloaked or taken on some other elusive approach for us to just be finding her ship now. Also, I wouldn’t be surprised if that wasn’t her ship’s computer helping her out by shutting down the lights right before we found her. She’s an outlaw of some degree. We will run DNA and facial recognition searches on her when we get back to the patrol ship."

After the security robots had removed her from the space suit, she felt their spindly three-fingered hands grip her tightly on her legs and arms as they carried her through the docking tube. Now was the time.

She released an acid through the pores of her skin, designed by the Prime labs to melt metallic objects and leave organic matter like her unharmed. Smoke curled from the binds on her hands and feet and the metal sagged and dripped. She ripped free from them and grabbed the nearest robot’s head and twisted it off. Then she took its arm and pointed the rifle mounted there toward the remaining three robots and, hacking into the rifle’s computer, sent a blurring column of bullets at them. Metal flew in bits and tumbling pieces, spewing hydraulic fluid in all directions. All four robots toppled over one another. This all had happened within a few seconds. She was lucky she hadn’t breached the docking tube’s outer walls and ejected into space. Several dents and black stars marked the wall where bullets had landed.

She ran. They came after her. She made it to the patrol ship before the older woman and the three other officers were even halfway into the docking tube, the drone over their heads.

Vera hacked into the door panel and the docking hatch sealed instantly. She hesitated for seconds, holding her hand over the lever that when twisted would recede the docking tube from her ship and effectively release all four officers into the vacuum of space to their death.

She peeked out at them from the docking hatch window and flipped them her middle finger then turned it downward to point behind them. "Back to the ship," she said, though she knew they couldn’t hear her.

The older woman’s brows lowered, and she mouthed something that looked like, "I’ll get you."

Vera shrugged and smiled. She waved.

All four officers turned and headed back to Nancy’s cargo bay. Vera knew Nancy would keep them locked in there, sealing off all outward communication until she returned. Then Vera would tranquilize them all and leave them back on their patrol ship. That is if she made it back with it in one piece. If not, she’d improvise as usual. I do that, she thought, I improvise. It was strange having memories of common self-awareness bubble up like that, even though Prime had just reprinted her a day ago. As the hatch on Nancy’s docking bay closed with the four officers’ safely inside, she twisted the lever and the docking tube made a whooshing sound and receded in less than a minute.

She turned and headed for the cockpit. "Now to navigate this thing into the hornet’s nest and kill the queen. First, I’ve got to do some major hacking into their video feeds and security systems. Fuck!"

Less than an hour later, she had everything hacked to allow her infiltration through Krakko-9 securities firewalls and keep from alarming them of her presence. She’d even found a patrol officer’s blue uniforms on board that fit, though she hated how stiff it felt. It had a higher-ranking insignia on it and that could benefit her or alert suspicion. Some things she just had to work with.

All the camera feeds that Krakko-9 could see of the patrol ships cockpit were now running a simulated movie she’d created of the four officers assigned to the ship running about mundane duties and she’d even thrown in some dialogue of the lesser ranked guys complaining about being overworked. It would suffice until she had made it to the security headquarters on the moon. She was nearing the atmosphere now. The Krakko-9 security scans should allow her to land without any interference given the patrol ships signature broadcasts. She put the ship on auto-pilot so that not even her approach would seem suspicious. Patrol ships were required to land on auto-pilot anyway.

It wasn’t long before the Krakko-9 metropolis headquarters Mathilis came into view below. It was a majestic colossal sculpture of obscenely gun turreted octagonal towers laced with a network of transport railways and thousands of flitting numerically marked vehicles swarming about like bees. Her own patrol ship slowed its descent and a small blue light started blinking on the cockpit control panel in front of her. It had locked in on its docking bay mark. The hologram before her lit up with the scrolling data functions of protocols and permissions for docking. She made a fist waiting for them all to complete. This was the last barrier her hacks into the ship’s computer had to pass. One tiny bug or broken path in the diversion hack and the ship, as well as all inhabiting Mathilis, would be alerted to an intrusion. Hopefully, her codes were up to date.

A loud beeping sound overrode everything else on the ship’s speaker system, followed by a firm tenor voice that said, "Patrol three-twenty-one! Explain the discordance in your docking frequencies..."

She cringed, trying to think of a response.

"Patrol three-twenty-one! Please respond or we will dispatch a squad to greet you on arrival!"

"Still complete assholes," she said to herself, shaking her head. She touched the microphone square on the cockpit panel with her finger. "Sorry, we’re experiencing some errors from a bug we picked up from a patrol stop. We may need a cleaner reboot. Thanks!"

"A security robot will meet you at dock."

"Shit!"

At light speed, her brain implant screened through possible diversion scenarios or possible stealth aversions to arriving with the security droid there to greet her. She got four possible stealth options and zero survivable diversions that would not increase the likelihood of her being captured. Sometimes, she just trusted her instincts over the computer in her brain, and this time her instincts said to crash the ship. She tightened her grip on the manual control stick and overrode the autodocking sequence on the pilot terminal with her other hand.

An architectural labyrinth spanning the horizon as far she could see, tilted and zoomed up towards her as she began a nose dive. It would have to be a crash; an emergency landing would be met with more security personnel than the original docking bay. Lucky for her it was still night. She could eject right before impact with little or no detection. Alarms began to pierce the cockpit. Red lights flashed, and warning text scrolled across her vision.

CHANGE TRAJECTORY, FATAL CRASH IMMINENT! EJECTION PROTOCOL INITIATED!

"Good!" She bit down on her bottom lip. "Get me out of this piece of shit!"

She grabbed the straps holding her in the pilot chair over her shoulders. The streets below rushed up at her, a myriad of neon signs blinked and small vehicles flitted across her view in a blur. A powerful hiss made her ears pop as the hatch opened and shot her several hundred kilometers up into the air. She could see the patrol ship below as it smashed into the side of a very distinguished looking building. Glass glittered in a cloud at impact and then clouds of fire erupted. The force of the cockpit ejection had her still rising up into the air. She didn’t want the chute to open. Too much visual. She unlocked her seatbelts and leaped away from the chair.

The dark neon speckled ground below offered little visuals for soft places to land. She made three slow even blinks, turning on the night vision in her retinas. As the ground inflated towards, she noticed a small park area with lush needle trees clustered around trails for patrolmen to do their daily runs. It was about a kilometer to the left of her current decent, but with a little enhanced speed and ingenuity, she might shift her fall enough to land in one of those trees.

She ripped the front of her patrol issue shirt open, buttons popping away up behind her in the rush of freefall, and jerked the corners out beside her taut like the wings of a flying squirrel. She guided herself farther left, dipping and shifting to try and use the breeze to her advantage. The trees in the park rushed towards her. She smelled the evergreen sap. She grit her teeth as the cold wind of freefall pummeled her. Her last thought before impact and was that the bruises from the freefall wind would be minor compared to what the tree limbs would do to her now.

Next Chapter: Part 3: Into the Junkyard