Chapter 27

To start with, Ironstar had fired neutron guns into the sooty ice with little effect other than drilling perfectly circular holes several metres into the roid. The positron gun proved almost as worthless. The ice easily absorbed the damage and whatever water had been vaporised, quickly froze over again. Mercy was not going to leave Hortan now she had found him and thus some ingenuity was needed. Eventually she had thought of using the six-metre fusion flame of her ship to melt the water away. To start with, the flame would only produce a couple of cubic metres of vapour until her ship thundered away from the roid and that vapour settled again before she could set up for another run. To compensate, Ironstar positioned his ship nose to nose with her ship, clamped the emergency docking port onto her' and then slowly increased throttle until his motion balanced the force of her engine out. A plume of superheated vapour created an arachnid fantasy landscape around their ships with thin gossamer threads of ice connecting impossibly thin sheets of ice that cradled their ships like interconnected cobwebs on an early morning, only broken by Ironstar's six metre bluish-yellow fusion flame. After twenty minutes of digging, a bright yellow surface could be seen at the bottom of the hole; Hortan's Behemoth. Marcy practicably yelped with joy as she saw the battered xithricite appear from the ice. Her radio crackled.

"Mercy, company. No IFF, I suspect they are the bad guys. Can we get Hortie out in less than two minutes?"

"No way! That is so unfair 'Star. What are they doing?"

"Ehm, looks like they are scanning for something. Damn, I think they have seen us, my radar receiver warning just went off."

Mercy's had sounded as well, the unmistakable energies of a targeting radar had bathed her ship like a flashlight in the night. And precisely like a deer in the glare of headlights, she froze in the radar cone until Ironstar's voice broke the silence.

"No doubt; they are coming to investigate. Two of the ships are headed over here although at a leisurely pace. I reckon we have four minutes until they are here."

Mercy considered their options for about ten seconds before she released the clamps that held their ships together.

"Stop boosting and provide me with an escort out of here. I'll cover Hortan again and we'll come back with a bigger force and real digging tools. For now, we'll run as a miner and escort."

Ironstar clicked twice for assent and turned his ship to face the two inbound pirates. Mercy turned the turbo off and reversed into the hole she had dug. At the bottom, she fired her main engine at full speed as well as her control thrusters, corkscrewing up and away from the fast-crumpling ice-scape that covered the hole in an avalanche of crushed ice, vaporising at the touch of her drive flame and fusing solidly. Their efforts had been erased as if they had never been there. With less than 30 seconds to go, Mercy boosted out of the system with Ironstar riding security and the two pirates in token pursuit.

###

"Yes Sir, I understand that the message is a priority Alfa message and I will relay it right away."

The connection dropped and the duty officer at UPK HQ leaned back in his high-backed synth-leather chair and folded his fingers behind his head. He needed to make a choice that might have consequences beyond what he could immediately grasp. He could relay the information as requested and thus do his duty with little or no consequence. On the other hand, he could call the guys that had ensured he got this job, instead and give them the information. Undoubtedly it would be interesting information for them, the question was whether it would be profitable enough for him to blow his cover. What the hell, he hated this job anyway and the tidbits he had been able to steal and sell had been almost worthless. He called his contact and gave him the information he had just received, including the fact that he had blown his cover with this leak. The contact was not very forthcoming and only promised a small amount of money for the information, which made the duty officer frown and swear. He had hoped for at least another figure in that amount but it would have to do. He walked over to his backpack and rummaged around in the bottom until he found the small round device that was disguised as a Koffee mug. Without regret he twisted the bottom and set the timer for two minutes, placed it on top of the main server and walked out of the room. Next stop, grey space and the free-fall bars of Bractus where he would hopefully be able to meet Asteroth and cash in some favours. With a blaring of sirens from the UPK HQ, codename Mighty Mouse was no longer an active agent.

###

The Prometheus slewed sideways towards the Serco Heavy Assault Cruiser for a reload and some armour swapping. A lot of the damage had been wrought by the secondary explosions from his targets, with only slight damage from neutron or positron guns. Still, it would be nice to have a full set of armour again. Two full squadrons of bombers arched towards their Itani prey like eight fat beads of orange light across the bluish-grey background of Deneb with four gnats in bluish-white surrounding them; eight Ragnaroks and their four escort fighters. Soon the distance between them and the single Itani Trident would be crossed by lines of blue drive-flames from heavy missiles and soon after the Trident would be engulfed by explosions that would overload the shield and destroy the ship. Anytime soon it would happen, anytime soon. Two single lights appeared in front of the bombers, two lights that appeared out of the nothing. The lights elongated to spears of plasma that accelerated violently towards the bombers. The Prometheus pilot had a sinking feeling in his gut, a feeling that was confirmed when streaks of orange flames erupted from one of the plasma spears into the bombers followed by blue streaks of positrons. The carefully orchestrated bombing run was being torn asunder, just like he himself had destroyed the Itani bombers moments ago. He felt the docking clamps attach to the hardpoints on his side, ready to pull his ship into the repair bay. Instead of releasing his controls, he pushed his turbo switch as hard as he could, snapping the diamond-reinforced mono-molecular cables as if they had been made of cotton and bathing the docking bay bulkhead in plasma from his exhaust. He disregarded the enraged calls from the Cruiser's fighter controller and boosted as fast as he could towards the, by now, swirling melee of bombers and fighters. He checked his flight time and swore. The thrice-cursed Itani would have more than a minute to wreak havoc before he could arrive and set things straight. With gritted teeth he watched as the bombers were destroyed, one by one, escort fighters swirling around the group impotently. As soon as his Prometheus was in radar range, he swept every sensor he had across the Itani fighters. Two Valkyries, both only slightly damaged at this point, strings of positrons emanating from the Axia positron gun beneath the centre hardpoint and the occasional flare from the left side hardpoint. Not a problem, he was able to take on two Valkyries and win, even as damaged as he was now. The IFF resolved the identities of the two Itani fighters and once more the Prometheus pilot swore. SKV pilots, Niki and Ghost. He turned his Prometheus around and accelerated towards the Cruiser. His chances of survival against the two SKV fighters were negligible and he needed to alert ONE HQ that SKV were active again. A group of twenty Itani bombers appeared between him and the Heavy Assault Cruiser with eight Valkyrie escorts. Before he could send a warning, sixty trails of blue drive flames started from the bombers, destination: the Cruiser. He shifted direction and boosted for the jump point, his left side armour detecting impacts from several bolts of accelerated positrons. Apparently one of the SKV pilots had disengaged from the bombers in order to hunt him down. Damn it, he needed to get away from the...

The positron bolts painted an actinic landscape on the rear of the Prometheus, vaporising xithricite armour and internal wiring. One of the bolts tore through the cables and impacted on the rear of the cockpit, transforming the wall lining into a jet of plasma that cut through the torso and armoured helmet of the Serco pilot before painting the cockpit screen in a metallic sheen with spots of blood, brains, meat, bones and cybernetic parts. Less than a second after that, the main engine power coupler disintegrated in more actinic fire and the entire main charge of the battery exploded outwards, carrying the ship parts with it. For Niki, it was just another Serco kill, another notch on his already heavily marked kill counter. He turned and looked for more Serco to kill but found none. Only expanding balls of shrapnel, one massively larger than the others. Mission successful, re-arm and relax. Time for another trap.

###

Charlie opened the concealed door to Surbius' private filing cabinet with too much trepidation for one person, and definitely too much for a young girl such as herself. The room was very large but felt tiny due to the amount of filing cabinets that took up most of the floor space and the stacks of reports that leaned against everything that was solid. Or just available. Charlie hesitated for a couple of seconds but then decided that she couldn't face ts without having checked every spot of Surb's office. She took a deep breath and walked into the holiest of holy fully expecting fire to rain down on her any second. Off course, it didn't happen and she started poking around. Mining reports, trade schedules, applications for non-standard this and that, petitions for changes of procedure, a foot, the complete guild painting regulations... wait a second. She grasped the foot and pulled on it. It was connected to something, probably its owner. She looked around the cabinet and saw someone lying under crates of paperwork. She pulled harder and got a muffled protest in response. She looked at the tangled mess that had pinned the person and started removing the crates.

"Lieutenant Surbius! Sir, I did not know you were in here."

Surbius, fifteen pounds lighter and with grey skin, flaked lips and surrounded by empty concentrated Koffee capsules, usually used as base for a whole pot of Koffee, was lying flat on his back. His voice was raspy and weak but his gaze was as steely as always.

"If you could provide me with a cup of water, that would be a help miss...?"

"Charlene, Charlie for short."

She walked outside and grabbed a paper cup that she filled from the freshwater fountain in Surbius' office. She walked briskly back and handed the Lieutenant the water, squatting opposite him as he drank it with a single toss of his wrist.

"Thank you Charlene. Now, I have better go refresh myself and inform Commander Estenk about the situation."

Without further, he got up and walked over to the exit where he turned and indicated the door with his hand.

"After you Miss, the filing cabinet is off limits to junior personnel."

Still confused, Charlie walked out and observed as Surbius lock the concealed door behind him and then follow her out of the office.

I always said that letting mice into the organization was a bad move. Mice are timid and easily coerced. Worse still, mice are related to, and are sometimes confused with, rats.

Now, if you'll excuse me I have to go and retrieve my LasRifle battery from the wall charger, and pull the caseless microgrenades for the custom underslung launcher attachment out of storage, along with those special-order thermobaric-gyrojet rounds for my UPK officer's service magnum. (And, of course, nothing trumps the awesome might of the BRAN CANNONâ„¢). Word from HQ is that its open season on traitors, and I'm going hunting.

-CNH

Och, first class writing.

So that's where I left myself.

Chapter 28

The alert klaxon went off with a three-tone blast of deafening noise followed by a female voice shouting "FIRE FIRE FIRE" and finished with the same three-toned blast. Nikan briefly considered the easy solution and blast the damned horn off the wall. Too little sleep and way too much work had been the order of the day for the last many weeks, especially since the Honourable Senate of the UIT via the Infinite Wisdom of the Collected, or as it happened to be, slight majority of, senators had decided to cut UPK's budget once again. Before he could reach out for his UPK standard side-arm, the warning klaxon succumbed to the lack of spare parts that plagued the warning system as well as all the other systems in the barracks, and died. The noise level abated to merely annoying instead of painful, the noise now coming from the klaxons in the communal areas. Nikan fumbled on the small nightstand for his PDA, found it and flicked the lid off. Green light from the background illuminated his face and his eyes moved rapidly from side to side as the data was assimilated. Damn, no more sleep for him. He grabbed his uniform, considered swapping it for a clean one, remembered that his two other uniforms were packed and stored in the headquarters and then settled for brushing the worst specks off. He briefly considered the half-finished styrofoam cup of Koffee that he had left when he collapsed on his bed last night, or rather early morning, and then decided that he would probably need the caffeine. The liquid was revolting, oily and bitter, without the usual goodness feeling that he usually associated with Koffee. With a grimace that would win him prizes at the annual Eo Mime's conference, he swallowed the liquid and stood up, grabbed the standard issue belt and strapped it around his narrow hips. He turned for the door, tossed a couple of mints to clear the worst of the bad Koffee taste as well as any resident halitosis that might linger after the short sleep. Before opening the door, he activated his communication unit.

"Duty officer, this is Capt'n Hardrive, how can I be of assistance?"

The static hiss told a story in itself and Nikan decided to pay the bridge a visit in person.

###

"...and then I turned and hammered the turbo booster while dumping water like a maniac. The dumb assault bot got completely confused and smashed into the roid, exploding it into gratifyingly small pieces. All that was left for me to do was to ram the transport bot a few times more to get the ore free and voila, one load of finest hive-mined Heliocene could be scooped up."

Cranston leaned back as a mighty laugh bellowed from the big Serco across the table, at a fitting volume for the giant man. The Serco grabbed his beer stein and took a mighty swig, placing it on the table again with the big numeral one facing Cranston.

"That was a good story trader. Reminds me of the time I did combat patrol in my Behemoth down in grey. These three Itani ships were hammering towards the wormhole at full throttle when... two seconds little buddy."

Aelius focused on nothingness for a couple of seconds before his eyes again met Cranston's.

"Sorry, an emergency call from our COSP in Deneb."

"COSP?"

"Combat Space Patrol, sorry about the acronyms. We get used to using them all the time. Speeds things up. Anyway Mr. Gorky, back to business. I am sure we can come to an agreement considering more patrols in grey space. It is after all in our interest as well that our influence reached all the way to Bractus so we can stop the thrice cursed Itani xithricite transports. After all, with the war in Deneb being a pretty much one-sided conflict right now, we have plenty of pilots for it."

"Sounds good Sir. It would surely take a lot of work off our shoulders and off the UIT military as well."

Aelius snorted in contempt when Cranston mentioned the UIT military. The UIT, dominated by the various factions and controlled by a, in the best of times, inefficient senate, had come up with a lowest cost solution to the question of sovereignty and allowed their military to be partially privatised with the dedicated combat patrols taken by the UPK. By all accounts, their border defences were adequate and in deep enough layers that it would be a costly affair to breach them but nothing a dedicated Serco battlefleet wouldn't be able to defeat. This worked to the advantage of UIT anyway; it didn't pose any threat to neither Itani nor Serco and at the same time kept whatever rogue elements would come from grey space, in check. That underpinned the only reason that the UIT was allowed to exist; they served as a convenient trade partner that was harmless.

"I am sure they would like to save their money for something else. A bridge somewhere or some public parks in Verasi."

Cranston grimaced. The Senate had a foul history of starting projects that didn't make any sense in order to get money to whatever constituency the senator was elected in. Last year had been especially grim, with two public park projects in Verasi that had been projected and paid for even though no space had been available for them. Verasi was by far the most densely populated system of UIT and the parks would have necessitated another station. Which wasn't paid for. The billion-credit loss was in part absorbed by cuts across the military.

"Well, at least it would help us of the TGFT. Naturally, we will move more pilots to Serco space and ensure that the trade runs uninterrupted to help you as well."

The Serco extended his hand to Cranston and then stopped short. The distant look re-appeared in his eyes.

"Hold on, a new message arrives."

Cranston jotted some notes onto his pda and started working on his feedback once he had reached Dau again. “Yes Mr. Estenk Sir, it was pretty hard negotiation but I managed to get all of our points across. Yes Sir, I would like to become a member of the council for my efforts

“We are going to have to postpone this agreement Mr Gorky. Some unfortunate events has just happened in Deneb and we need to send out a major COSP now with all available pilots. Please stay in the bar as long as you please, I’ll contact you again once we are back.”

With no further explanation, Aelius rose and left the bar. Cranston frowned at the interruption; it had gone so well. Patience, he could wait.

###

John strapped the harness across his chest and checked to make sure all the pouches were safely closed. He just needed to don his hood and check his gun and then he was all ready to go. He could feel his stomach churn with anticipation and nervousness, the same as he always felt before going knowingly into combat. He saw Buzz and Gramps likewise fidget with their equipment and grinned. They were as nervous as he was. And beyond them was Rose, graceful even in the rags that were wrapped in many layers around her. She turned and walked over towards him, both hands holding a bowl of something steaming. He straightened his back and holstered the massive Corvus custom made three-barrelled gatling neutron handgun in the holster on his broad back. The girl's rags slid off, revealing the skin-tight dress she was wearing underneath. John Eldritch, Hero™, grabbed the girl around the waist and pulled her close. She balanced the bowl in one hand and leaned back, her left hand around John's muscle-bulging neck. John smiled his wide and famous Hero™ smile before bending his head to the girl's lips, the vapour of the bowl filling his nostrils with meaty goodness...

"John?"

He shook his head once and focused on the face of Rose, the only part of her that was not covered by rags. The thin steaming liquid was more water than anything else with some tofu pieces that looked awfully out of place. That was probably the last of the tofu they had left though; the meat had run out days ago. She lifted the bowl to him and he grabbed it with both hands, lifted it to his lips and drank deep from it. He noted above the rim that she was watching, that the rest of the group was watching. Not eating, and no more steam came from the pot.

"Aren't you going to have some Rose?"

"We are out John. That is the last of the tofu. We decided that you three should have it and then while you are away, we'll go down to the vat and see if we can scrounge some more algae protein."

John nodded without commenting. If he had been able to change it, he would have. But right now he needed to focus on the mission at hand. He drank the rest and handed the bowl back.

"Thanks Rose. Ehm, I better get ready."

She tiptoed and placed a kiss on his cheek.

"For luck."

She walked away and John could feel a gentle heat spreading in him, emanating from his chest and ending in his cheeks. He shook his head; damnit he was behaving like a teenager. He grabbed his trusty omni-rifle, checked the power counter and the block of xithricite that provided ammunition. Fully charged and ready. He walked over to Gramps and Buzz who were ready and waiting for him. They grinned at each other and walked out into the corridor.

Overworked, underpaid, and unappreciated? No doubt about it, thats UPK alright. Sometimes, I wonder if the Senate would notice if we all just packed our bags and disappeared. Their domestic policy is going to bite them in the ass one of these days, mark my words.

(As usual, good job with the writing, Whytee. The plot in this story is taking some interesting turns...)

-CNH

Chapter 29

The planning for his get-away had been one of the first things he had started when he had been placed in the UPK headquarters and since nobody had realised that he was now no longer a member of that organisation, he could make a clean escape. He had gathered what few possessions he had wanted to keep, holstered the small slug-thrower in a concealed underarm holder and walked whistling towards the launch bay. The bay was a pandemonium of security people and traders, the traders trying to get permission to leave the bay and the security people trying to screen everyone or denying everything. That didn't matter for him, he had access to the Senate's own bay, courtesy of his new friends. Still whistling, he walked over to the special access door, swiped his card and walked into the corridor behind it. This bay had an entirely different serene atmosphere and a slight smile crossed his lips. There, just fifteen metres away was the Warthog Mk II he had purchased for this exact purpose.

"Hey Casper, what are you doing here?"

He stopped and turned slowly, his pulse accelerating to the double amount of strokes in less than a second. He had not expected that voice here and seeing the freckled jovial face that belonged to it was not welcome.

"Iterlin, just checking up on the Grand Senator's ride in case he wants to leave."

He nodded in the direction of the gold and bronze heavy Behemoth that was specially designed, cargo space converted into a luxury apartment and extra gun turrets on the sides. When the Grand Senator wanted to go somewhere, he wanted to go there in style and without missing any comforts. Iterlin turned his face to look in the same direction as Casper who leaned forward and grabbed the heavy stunner from Iterlin's belt. All UPK stunners were safety locked with a DNA code that ensured that nobody could turn the weapon of a Peace Keeper. The designers had not envisaged that a Peace Keeper would fire on one of his own. Iterling looked sufficiently confused when he stared down the barrel at Casper's unwavering hand behind it.

"What are you doing Casper? What in the name of the Goddess are you doing?"

Casper refrained from answering and instead pulled the trigger firing a full dose of electricity into Iterlin's face, only releasing the trigger when Iterlin's body hit the deck plates with a dull thud. He tossed the stunner onto Iterlin's convulsing chest and started walking over to his Warthog. He frowned, stopped and turned around to face the stunned Peace Keeper again. With no emotion at all, he flicked his wrist and produced the gun that was up his sleeve. He flicked the safety off and pointed the gun at the helpless guard. Gently, he squeezed the trigger and flinched slightly as the heavy slug smashed through the left eye and further on through the back of the head of Iterlin before it spent whatever energy that remained on deforming the deck plate below. The skull had emptied its contents onto the deck plate aling with the bullet, with hair and skin mixed in as well, the convulsions of the body moving it in small spasms. Casper had to look away quickly before he gagged and almost ran over to his Warthog. He closed the canopy and set the air-regulator to “purge” to get the stench of death out of the cockpit. He pushed the auto-launch button and was ejected into space just shortly before his lunch ejected itself as well.

###

Chi hurt all over, flash burns on every exposed surface of her body and face. Compared to Malachia, she had been lucky though; the formerly green hair had been burnt off at the roots with most of his skin on his head flayed off by the intense heat. Chi wasn't sure that he would make it alive even if the UIT spooks worked fast. Chi touched Malachia's neck behind the left ear gently, one of the few places where the skin had not been burnt off. Probably due to the fact that it wasn't skin at all but a neural interface that was indistinguishable from normal skin. It even had a rather sophisticated chameleon-like ability to emulate the colouring of the surrounding skin. Right now it was a dull black instead. Her own interface connected and Chi closed her eyes to be able to concentrate better. It was needed, the neural network was scrambled pretty badly and with Malachia unconscious, she had to work her own way around the place. The network was a labyrinthine nightmare of Escherian complexity, ordered in four dimensions. Chi probed gently at first but couldn't find any semblance of order anywhere. She would have to resort to brute force and with a resignation borne of necessity, she started breaking down the mental barriers that Malachia had set up to be able to navigate around in his own head. There, a nugget of information that she needed and only slight damage. She unfolded the information and swore silently. This was worse than she had anticipated, much worse. She considered the situation with a growing sense of desperation. She had just alerted the UIT spooks and the odds were that they would at least trawl Malachia when they treated him, thus exposing the secret information inside his head. Among that, exposing the active agents the PA had in Dau. Chi could not allow that to happen and with a small sigh of regret she started tearing Malachia's entire datasphere apart, erasing information as she encountered it. She hoped Mal would forgive her, damn she wished that she would forgive herself.

The whirring of power tools announced company and she ended the data search with a last command, flooding Malachia's body with whatever endorphins that was left in his head. Hopefully he wouldn't feel anything at all. A searchlight started playing its light on the top of the tunnel as the owner of it crawled inside. Chi was about to call softly to the person, expecting that person to be a person sent from the UIT spooks when something stopped her. Instead she covered her mouth with her arm and spoke softly into the burnt flesh.

"How much wood can a woodchuck chuck."

A stinging pain on her leg informed her of the dart that had entered her thigh and a numbing spread quickly to the rest of her body, engulfing her in peaceful bliss. She was trapped in her own head but fortunately she had started the scrambling process before they had paralysed her. They would get no information out of her without a PA passkey and her own code. She succumbed to the drugs, silence, peace, and painlessness.

###

The alert window popped up, interrupting Eggert in his dinner. Or breakfast or lunch, or whatever someone else chose to call it. He hadn't eaten regularly for the last ten years at least; eating whatever was around, whenever he felt hungry. This one was some symphony of meat and lettuce neatly squeezed between fat slices of bread with slightly too much dressing in it for his taste. Some of it had dripped down his left hand and stained his uniform sleeve and he had been busy licking the rest of it off the bottom of the sandwich. The alert was from the local UIT police force on the lower deck. Apparently the UPK headquarters had had an explosion in their command centre with at least one casualty. That made Eggert wonder whether his signal had arrived at the right place. Swearing softly, he punched the only number he was certain would have a trustworthy person on the other end. It rang three times before the person in the other end answered.

"What can I do for you Egg's?"

"Please tell me you got my message half an hour ago Nice?"

"Can't say that I did my friend. What was it about?"

"Fuck, I had assumed they would inform you right away. Listen, I have a contact that is in dire need of assistance right now. I'm sending coord's for her. Can you go help out?"

"I'd prefer not to bro, we are in quite a pickle here with the bombing of our command room and the murder of one of our guards in the Senator's bay."

"Priority Nice. I need it as a priority."

"'Nuff said then. Send me the grid; I'll go there myself. If you can, on the other hand, find some clues as to this mess I'd be grateful."

"I'll get on it right away. Oh, and the person is diplomatic level Alfa."

Eggert could hear the soft whistle from captain Hardrive, they re-affirmed that they'd try to help each other and hung up. Eggert grabbed another bite of his sandwich and dialled another number.

"Fletholm residence, Camille speaking."

"Ma'am, I am sorry for the interruption but I need to speak to the Commander please."

"You have got to be joking. This is his night off. I have planned this for months!"

The anger literally smashed through the speaker and made Eggert flinch.

"I must insist ma'am. National crisis."

The phone was tossed to the table on the other end and Eggert could hear a very irate female voice shout for the commander. He was on in less than twenty seconds.

"Fletholm, this better be really fucking serious."

"She sounded really mad boss."

"Hail thee, prince of stating the obvious. Spill it Eggert."

He did. The boss did not take it nicely.

This incident promises to be something of a welcome change from all of those endless, mind-numbingly routine sector patrols and covert data-mining operations. For me, at least, this could be fun. Poor Fletholm, though. The guy has to deal with crisis like these day in and day out, and never seems to get a break. I've done and endured things that would break lesser men and I tell you: that job would kill me.

Probably why I respect him a hell of a lot more than Operations Martial Svaet.

-CNH

(Heh. Now this could be fun.)

Chapter 30

The familiar green haze of Dau K-10, better known as TGFT headquarters, was a by-product of the intense asteroid mining around the station and was even at the best of times a nuisance. Right now it was decidedly annoying and dangerous as well. Mercy piloted her ship at well above the maximum speed allowed for any approach vector to the station, ignoring the frantic calls from the station's traffic controllers as well as the less polite reports from her own systems that had collision alerts going off as rapidly as fire works at a Serco Liberty parade. Acting more on instinct than on actual visual cues, she twisted her ship along the axis, tapped her top thrusters slightly and missed the outgoing Behemoth class tradeship by a couple of metres, only by habit registering the bright Hunter Green colour as it flashed past and vanished in the haze. The data from the near-collision was relayed back to Ironstar's ship trailing Mercy's around 400 metres further back, allowing him to avoid the trader with ample room to spare. The station appeared out of the haze, an elongated lozenge structure that had several counter-rotating disks around its fat centre and almost pointed ends towering above and below her and disappearing into the haze. Mercy spotted the docking bay rings of the TGFT sector of the station and activated the turbo for the last sprint towards the bay. At the last second she turned the ship and activated the turbo again, bringing the ship to an almost complete stop, impacting on the docking bay clamps with only 2 m/s. The loud metallic sound told her that the ship was securely fastened and ignoring the usual shutdown procedures, she instead popped the canopy open as soon as the bay had cycled and brought her into the station proper. The opulent man that came running towards her had his anger pasted on his face, sweat running down over red cheeks and hair messily swept to one side in what could best be described as hurricane hair, the kind of hair that would make the late Don King proud. Mercy took her helmet off, shook her blond hair into something that resembled order before twisting it into a ponytail. The opulent man was about to intercept her ship when the bay next to her reverberated with a loud metal sound, like someone hitting a fifteen-ton church bell with a canon-shot. Ironstar had approached with about the same speed as she had, without slowing at the end she reckoned; perfect timing. The opulent man had been pushed against the far bulkhead by the noise as well as the security clamps that were placed around the reverberating docking bay and he looked to be too stunned to speak or act. Mercy smiled a thin smile and jumped onto the deck plates with the elegance she usually displayed; just because she was in a hurry was no reason to slack after all, and started walking towards the TGFT main quarters.

The walk through the corridors and merchant's areas was usually pleasant for Mercy, she loved the different smell, the busyness of the open areas and the sheer feeling of many people gathered around her. She loved it as much as she loved the absolute solitude she found in her ship along the tramlines of interstellar space, for the same reasons just twisted 180 degrees. And on a normal day she would at the very least stop for a large cup of Koffee and maybe a waffle or two, sit for a chat with whomever she encountered, sharing gossip, tuning her social side to whatever nuances were prevalent on the station. But this time she had an entirely different and much more urgent problem that needed attention. She passed the double doors that marked the demarcation line between the public and the TGFT parts of the station, flashing her ID at the two bored looking rent-a-cops that were guarding the entrance. She steered directly for the council chamber where she expected Ecka and ts would be, frowned slightly at the confused looking Charlie who was standing outside. Mercy decided to ignore the young girl, pushed the door open and walked into the large room. As expected, Ecka sat at his place at the end of the table, twin claymore over the family tartan behind him, with ts to his left side and someone unexpected to his right.

"Surbius," she blurted, instantly hating herself for losing her cool. And her focus. The Dark Master of Forms fixed her with his famous non-wavering gaze and once more she felt like a raw recruit, like the first time she had been called to the council chambers. Only sheer willpower kept her from checking her nametag to make sure it read Mercy instead of Merci. Fortunately ts rescued her from the embarrassing silence that was about to happen.

"I am sure you have some excellent explanation as to why you crashed our meeting?"

Mercy shook off the snake-tamer effect and nodded to Ecka in greeting.

"Sir, I have found Hortan. He is buried in an asteroid in Latos and I know the precise...." she lost her focus again, "Lieutenant Surbius, aren't you supposed to be away on some discovery expedition or something?"

Surbius didn't move a single facial muscle apart from the ones that was absolutely necessary for his speech to be understandable.

"The rumours of my expeditionary exploits have been vastly overrated I'm afraid. Suffice it to say that I am now here."

"But I saw the ship... Never mind. As I said, I know the precise location of Hortan's Behemoth and I am going to need some help to get him free."

Ecka leaned back and brought the pewter cup to his lips, the faintest trace of a smile encouraged her to go on.

"I tried getting him free with Ironstar's help but some rats, maybe even the same rats that have caused all these problems, arrived and we had to run. I think we can get him out with a decent fighter cover and maybe one or two dedicated mining ships."

Ts' fingers danced over the input field as she spoke until finally he gave up.

"Charlie!" he shouted and the doors opened again to allow Charlene to enter the room.

"Damned thing is acting up again. Listen, Mercy here has found Hort and we need some pilots to extract him. Get a hold of Lambin, Shna, Foo and get some of the recruits in on it as well. Mercy is lead on it. Whatever she needs, you get."

Mercy felt a great weight being lifted from her shoulders and did a mental high-five on herself. She bowed to Ecka and started to leave when a voice stopped her, Surbius'.

"Not so fast Miss Mercy. I see that my absence has left you somewhat in doubt as to the correct utilisation of the TGFT reporting system. I will send a list of what form you have forgotten to fill out and will require these on my system no more than a day after Hortan's timely rescue. As a matter of fact, I will help speed up the process by aiding in rescuing young Hortan; he needs a reminder or two as well after all."

###

Mighty Mouse left UIT space with no regret at all. The nagging feeling that someone would stop him and question him about the bomb at UPK HQ had lingered in the back of his head since Dau but it evaporated as if he had just eaten a kilo of prozac when he cleared the border turrets. He was safe now, or rather he was free. The first thing he wanted was to go to Bractus and visit his contact there, cash in some favours and some cash as well before settling in Helios for a nice time of rest and relaxation. He only encountered some debris along his route with the majority of it in Latos O-12 as could be expected. With little effort, he docked in Bractus, paid the small docking fee and moved clumsily into the station. He had very little zero-g training and was about as graceful as a whale on land. The velcro on his soles and elbows helped immensely and he only had to ask for help twice along the route to the main commercial area. He quickly found the place he had been told to go to in case of emergencies and secured himself a velcro'd spot where he could anchor himself. He brought out his pda and sent a message before he settled down with his F'Load nipple bottle. Undoubtedly they would be here soon or his message had been mistaken for something else.

###

The green screen painted Cat's face in shades that would be instantly recognised as unhealthy anywhere in the 'Verse, as the data flickered down in a flowing movement, too fast for the un-aided eye and brain. She ran a hand through her close-cropped hair as she concentrated on the problem in front of her. It was a habit she had acquired after the surgery, a reminder that everything was not as it used to be. She activated the nanotic network in her brainpal and ran through the solutions it presented her with, choosing the least damaging of the outcomes and punched it into the input field, only slightly annoyed that she had to physically access the machine instead of just using her brainpal. She understood the precautions were necessary especially with the recent attacks on the Viper's database that had resulted in several burned-out servers and a permanent ban on non-physical access. She was just happy the attack had taken place when she had been hospitalised and off-line; the amount of damage it could have done to her brain via the brainpal could have been potentially fatal. Especially since her usual firewalls were down due to the injury.

The machine accepted her input and started the ridiculously slow process of implementing the chosen scenario. If only she had been able to access a Serco breeding crèche computer but her status in Sercoland was still one of persona non-grata so that was out of the equation. She plugged herself into the computer and allowed it to access her brainpal via the cable inserted behind her ear. The actual writing of the program would only take a couple of seconds, the implementation of it would take some minutes more and then it was good-bye feelings. The remainder of the program would not be apparent until the chosen amount of time had passed and after she had downloaded the wetware, she would no longer be able to know what that time period was. She closed her eyes and waited for the wetware to take effect, knowingly accepting the brain damage she was about to incur on herself. It had been only the third option she had thought of, but she had not been able to get a hold of Riddik and talk to him about it thus dropping her first option without further thought. The second option had been to stop working as an active pilot and maybe start up in a training school or such, undoubtedly solving her immediate problem and it would mean that she could embrace her feelings fully. After long hard thinking, she had decided that being a combat pilot was too much an essential part of her person and that she wouldn't last long without the responsibility it carried along and thus discarded that option. In the end it had been option number three that had been the most viable solution, irrespectively of the damage it may cause.

She felt the 'ware take effect, felt the difficult minefield of emotions disappear and be replaced with the crystal clear chessboard of pure logic and reason. She could immediately identify what she had done and even why she had done it. It did not matter at all, the logic behind it was flawless and that fit the parameters for the psyche that was now the prevailing factor in her mind. She grabbed her helmet and walked down towards the launch bay, for her upcoming combat mission with Atice. Shlim came the opposite way, his uniform lacking the VPR insignia that he usually kept polished on his chest, proud of his status as a viper. Cat nodded and was about to walk past when Shlim stopped her with a gentle touch on her arm.

"Hi Cat, I was just on the way down to see you. Are you okay by now? I mean, I dunno, it is really not to pry or anything but I just wondered, you know?"

Cat regarded him with a cool gaze, read his body language, analysed his tone of voice, the insecurity that was showing in the light stutter and slight incoherent structure and briefly considered if he needed help. If so, it was nothing she could do.

"Yes, I am fully operational citizen. Now, if you will excuse me?"

He pulled his arm back as if she had been fashioned from pure plasma, his face contorting into disbelief. She looked forward again when a sudden urge made her dig in her front chest pocket, extract a small holo disk and present if to Shlim.

"I believe this is intended for you citizen Shlimaziel."

Dumbfounded, he accepted the disk and watched impotently as she disappeared around the next bend on her way to the launch bay. He looked down and read the text on the disk. "Shlim, private." He frowned but nonetheless walked over to a rent-a-holo-player, paid for the extra luxury of having privacy and inserted the disk not knowing what to expect. Cat's face appeared in the view area, tiredness painted across her face.

"Shlim, I am sorry I am not able to say this to your face but then I am not sure I would be able to do it, this. Lately I have encountered what I believe is feelings towards you, culminating with the encounter in Latos where I risked my own life repeatedly for the slimmest chance of rescuing you, even though I by doing that disregarded my mission, disregarded the safety of my fellow Vipers and disregarded my training. I realised that the feelings I had were like nothing I had even encountered. When you were in a coma, I tried contacting fellow warriors to seek guidance and came back empty handed, I tried reasoning with myself and once more realised that the feelings I had, trumped everything I could logically think off. With no chance of getting guidance through this difficult time, I decided for a deep-brain emotion purge and thus remove any emotional triggers in my brain. Which is why I talk about my feelings in past tense. When you see me again, I will once more have become a Serco warrior, guided by logic and reason as I was bred and trained to be."

A tear trickled down her cheek from the left eye and she wiped it away irritably before continuing.

"This may not be the best decision, but I cannot go on like I am right now. My every waking moment consist of thinking of you, all of my plans concern keeping you safe and happy. I cannot be me as I know me. And I don't know how to progress from here. So I chose to kill that part of me. I hope you will not hate me for what I am about to do, what I have done when you see this holo, I hope you will understand why I am doing this and I hope you are aware that I think I loved you once. Live well and prosper."

The holo screen winked out, leaving Shlim alone in the cubicle. Actually, he was alone and abandoned. He punched his hand through the foam-plast wall in rage and got up from the cheap easy-clean chair and started to open the door to go out. He stopped himself halfway out and turned around to face the holo-player, ejected the disk and stomped off, muttering about his eternal luck.

###

Cranston had been granted access in the tactical operations centre of ONE while Aelius was on the combat mission, albeit a chair in the very back of the room and without being able to see all the screens in the centre. The two main screens were a veritable lightshow of differently coloured codes with arrows beneath of different lengths and headings; the length showing average speed and the arrow showing course. Fighter controllers were coordinating the battle, moving groups of fighters to different sectors where they were needed, withdrawing fighters from sectors that were peaceful as well as allocating reserves to battered units. It was all very clinical and since all the other people in the room, apart from Cranston, were Serco, they were implanted with brainpals, leaving the communications to the dataverse instead of speaking. The room was deadly silent, only the occasional clicking broke the silence. Cranston was very impressed and was even more certain now that the pirate menace in Latos would be a saga in a few weeks with the amount of combat experience and the level of organisation ONE had. He spotted the code that meant Aelius' ship and followed it as he and the three companions he was flying with were dispatched to cover a string of bombers that were about to destroy a fairly large Itani grouping. Even though he was strictly neutral in the conflict, as he had to be according to the charter of TGFT, he couldn't help cheering for the giant Serco as the Itani discovered the threat and dispatched a number of fighters to engage him. One by one, the different shades of blue codes were winked out and Cranston found an idiot's smile plastered on his face until he remembered the deaths he had just been witness to. Still, it looked like the Serco would carry the day and destroy yet another Itani battlefleet. A new pair of blue codes appeared among the Serco bombers and right away the Serco bomber codes started disappearing in alarming numbers. One of the fighter allocators sent Aelius' group over to destroy the two Itani and Cranston almost felt sorry for the two Itani that had so bravely stood up against ten times as many Serco fighters. The feeling passed quickly when the remaining bombers winked out before Aelius' group arrived, and then Aelius' group started winking out, ending with only Aelius' ship against the two blue dots. The last Serco disappeared and a new larger group of Itani ships appeared, vectors pointing towards the Serco battlefleet, the length indicating high speed.

"Fuck me."

The words were as unfitting in the grave-like silence as a turd on a bowl of morning cereals. Cranston sat in silence and watched as the remaining red codes were winked out one by one until the only ones left were the ships flying border security on the wormhole itself along with the automated defence turrets. Cranston wasn't sure if he would be able to secure the aid of ONE anymore, they looked like they had quite a large fight on their hands.

Chapter 31

The tranquiliser darts crossed the distance from the launcher to the naked piece of skin that was visible between the guard's neck and his jaw, buried itself into his flesh and disgorged the fairly large dose of Knock-Out juice that felled the guard as promptly as if he had been hit in the head with a canon-shell. The guard ceased being an alert part of the security around the Priggly Pear and started being a collapsed bundle of rags with an unconscious person inside. From the hiding place, where he had used an hour to get into position, Wild Gramps oozed out and covered the entrance while John and buzz, carrying the heavy guns, moved almost slitheringly across the corridor and without stopping, opened the front door. Just inside the door were two guards but their attention was not on the door and the tranquiliser darts that slammed into their unprotected backs ensured that they stayed that way. The door opened again and Gramps moved in, lasgun thrust out in front of him and slightly crouched. All three moved into the Priggly Pear, weapons at the ready and scanning for the remaining three guards.

Well, that was what was supposed to have happened, but as with most things in life and especially in John Eldritch's life recently, it went completely balls-up from the start. The guard outside the Priggly Pear had been wearing a full-face mask against the cold and John had no clear shot for the tranq gun. Instead of firing the tranq gun and hope for a miracle shot, he opted for the silenced omni-gun set for single large bore, low velocity slug. It was almost too much to activate the interactive targeting system since the target was less than thirty metres away but he did it anyway. The scope showed the guard's face in vivid detail and when John depressed the trigger, he had front row to the highly theatrical implosion of the mask and the following explosion of cranial matter behind it that showered the contents of the guard's head onto the door. It just went to worse from that point really. Gramps moved from the concealed spot he had nudged into prior and positioned himself to cover the door as per their plan. The other guard, the one they hadn't spotted earlier, stuck his head out to see what the noise was and froze in that position apparently as surprised to see Gramps as he was to see the guard. Before any of them could do anything, another slug from John's rifle tore through the air and smashed into the guard's head. Unfortunately, the bullet was slightly too high, and instead of clipping the brainstem and thus removing any chance of an accidental discharge of the guard's weapon, if crushed the frontal lobes which triggered the guard's finger-nerves. The explosion of the gun was as unwelcome as a cabbage fart on a first date. John cursed softly and punched the cover away from the ventilation shaft he had been concealed in, slithered out and joined Gramps and Buzz in front of the bar entrance.

"Nice shooting," Gramps growled in a low voice. John was about to retort when he realised that Gramps meant it honestly. Instead, he grunted in acknowledgement.

"Too bad about the noise. We better move in fast."

John changed the selector on his rifle to flechette and lead the way to the door. They didn't have to open the door, however, as the door practicably exploded open when two guards came barrelling out, assault rifles held at the ready. John depressed the trigger and covered the left guard in a shower of two-inch darts that transformed the guard's torso and face into something that mostly resembled minced meat. The other guard fired his rifle on automatic towards Gramps, who was the nearest target and managed to squeeze several shots off before Buzz dropped him with a couple of well-placed shots to the chest. Out of old habit, Buzz followed the guard to the ground and depressed the trigger again when the guard's head hit the ground. Always two to the chest and one to the head; standard counter-terrorism training.

"You okay Gramps?"

"Yeah, took a couple of slugs to the chest that hurts like a mother. The armour stopped it though. Think my laspistol is smashed."

He tossed the twisted handgun aside and, with his left hand, dragged a large ungainly looking piece of metal out of a holster he had strapped under his jacket. Everything about this particular gun had been designed to incite a particular feeling in a person. When you were behind it, you felt good, powerful. If you were unlucky enough to stand on the other end, you felt that you were in serious trouble. The designers had succeeded magnificently and it was accentuated by the inscription that Gramps had made around the barrel, "Smile, wait for flash."

"Guess subtlety is a thing of the past. Lets go."

The door was kept open by the two pulped bodies that lay in the doorway and they stepped over them, trying to avoid the spreading pool of blood that steamed like a hot spring in the freezing cold, John as point with Buzz following and Gramps taking the rear position. They were greeted by a long burst of high-velocity slugs that whipped into the wall to the side of John with a sound like that of a giant repeatedly snapping his fingers. John crouched, turned his gun towards the thug that covered himself behind two of the girls they were here to rescue. Keeping his cool, John Eldritch, Hive-fleet Thrasher, switched the selector to single shot, low calibre, high velocity, and placed a bullet directly under the nose of the thug, smashing his brainstem and dropping him instantly. The two girls ran over to him, shedding their filthy rags on the way and reached him only clad in their finest hostess dresses. With about as much effort and thought that he put into breathing, he grabbed one of the girls and bent over her to place a kiss on her full... and fired two shots in the direction of the assailant. His effort was rewarded with two grunts of pain and he looked over the low board he had been hiding behind. He had hit the guard sure enough but he had also hit the girl that had been used as cover. The guard raised his rifle again but John could not fire his own without hitting the girl. The barrel of the assault rifle pointed directly at John when a giant noise exploded behind him. Gramps had fired the antique slug thrower, ending the firefight decisively. John crawled over to the girl as fast as he could. The rags were a mess of bloody holes that steamed in the extreme cold as the blood poured out of them. John was about to start first aid when he felt a hand on his shoulder.

"No use John. The blood has already stopped running, she is dead."

At least three flechettes had clipped arteries; she never had a chance. She probably never knew what happened either, but that was a hollow comfort.

The two remaining guards surrendered without fighting. Apparently the steam had gone out of them as soon as the leader of the gang had been killed and they were subdued with the tranq gun. Buzz rounded up the remaining girls and with no further delay, they started the trek back to the others, leaving the dead behind them with the two incapacitated guards.

###

Asahel sat heavily on the bench, or at least as heavily as was possible in the 0.2G that was the standard gravity for the campus area of Arna Orbital, the educational hub of the Azek system. Today's lessons had been of the dry kind, dimensional mathematics and the even drier "cognitive hive adaptations”. As the hours dragged on, he could barely keep awake and probably would have fallen asleep if it hadn't been for the occasional stolen glimpse of Lycu. Lycu, taller than him by at least a head, brown hair braided in tight whorls, freckles scattered upon her face in an uneven pattern that left the area around her right eye covered so heavily that they could be mistaken for a mole. He knew better though, he had observed her for the last two months at least and he was certain that it was freckles. Not that she had noticed him, he was fairly certain of that as well.

He spotted Lycu walk out of a door, her usual posse trailing like assault bots around a Queen; very fitting Asahel thought. She walked towards the residential area, ignoring her student satellites as usual and then seemed to look directly at him. He quickly looked away at his feet, his fingers, the book he was carrying, the dirt. Anything really. He heard hard soles clicking on the floor plates and saw the long black military style boots that were responsible for the sounds. He looked up to the top of the boots, saw the zero-g style dress that was secured to the boots by an intricate system of laces and stopped gazing higher; Lycu.

"That was a clever solution you came up with today."

Her voice was low but powerful and almost forced him to look up into her face, seek out the two green eyes that twinkled with amusement. Those eyes fixated him like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming truck. The others of the posse stood back about ten metres, undoubtedly chewing mild narcotic leaves or discussing the latest hair fashion from Dau.

"Ehm, thank you."

"I'm Lycu."

She extended her hand and smiled at him. The hand was covered in a light grey glove of some flame-retardant material that hid her slender fingers from view. He grasped it and shook it gently, marvelling at the doll-like bones of her hand.

"I know who you are, I think most people do. I am Asahel."

She laughed, not at him, but at the situation. Her laughter was like a visit from Tinkerbell.

"Okay, I guess they do. But that was still a clever solution you came up with. Do you think it is even remotely possible that you could crack a three-dimensional security lock?"

"Given one part of the code, it should be possible with the right programming. Once you have one part of the key, the quantum-looped states will betray a part of their different entanglement states and with the crypto-analysis programming run through the quasi-intelligent neural assembly of a hive bot, it should be possible. Well, at least as long as you kept the parameters of the neural assembly in check. It is a bit like smashing an intricate three-dimensional ice-lock with a sledgehammer and will destroy the lock in the process, but yeah. I could."

She smiled at him again, her eyes betraying genuine amusement.

"Walk with me?"

He got up and grabbed his books, walked past the posse and felt a light touch on his arm when they passed them. Lycu's hand on his arm; if he died right there, he would die a happy man.

###

Admiral Otestrom was smiling. Well, from the outside, you could see absolutely no difference from his normal sour expression, but inside he was smiling. The last capitol ship of the Serco invaders had just met its end under the bombardment of a full Itani bomber squadron, the internal parts of the ship being tossed about in an expanding sphere of cataclysmic destruction and mangled parts. The help of SKV had been invaluable and for the first time in more than a year, Deneb was again rightfully returned to the Itani people. Undoubtedly, the Serco would make a counterattack when they had gathered resources enough. And so he would have to prepare the defences instead of staying on the offensive. Even though he would love to, he was pretty sure that the Itani people wouldn't let him invade Geira Rutilus.

He watched in satisfaction as the two light blue markers indicating the SKV pilots blinked out of the system, back to whatever facility they spent their free time in and felt alone. A strange sensation for an Admiral who was commander of more than 350.000 men and women but somehow the retreat of the two pilots left him... vulnerable he guessed was the feeling. His internal smile disappeared and the sour expression spread from his features and into his entire body.

When the wormhole started disgorging fighters and capitol ships at a rate that was indicative of a full-scale invasion, his mood matched his expression fully. This would be the kind of ugly slugging match that he hated, the kind of fight that favoured the Serco ships with their more massive armour and heavier weapons. He retreated from the wormhole and spread his force out through the entire system, to better be able to conduct a running battle, the kind of fight that favoured his force. He had been undisputed master of the system for no more than three hours.

Chapter 32

The message on his pda was about as welcome as discovering the other half of a worm in an apple he had just taken a bite from. Asteroth did not like getting calls from "assets" without him calling them first, unless they had some morsels of very useful information. And especially not when said "asset" was present at what was right now Asteroth's home. He placed a few calls and started moving down to the commercial area of the station with the usual feline grace that only comes from countless hours of free-fall training. The inhabitants of the station were even more graceful, but that was to be expected from a population that lived their entire lives in zero-g. When he entered the open area that served as the communal area, he quickly scanned for any signs of trouble but found only one. A slightly pudgy youngish man, obviously not zero-g trained, had anchored himself to the "Trader's Rest", the most expensive and no doubt worst bar in the station. Most expensive because it was the only one that catered primarily to off-station customers, customers that were unused to zero-g and therefore needed the trappings of velcro to give them at least some semblance of up and down, of sturdiness, of gravity. It was the worst bar as well for roughly the same reason. All the items for sale were imported, especially from the Corvus stations in Odia. Asteroth liked some things from Corvus; drinks were not among those. With distaste safely stored away and his face an unreadable mask of indifference, he floated awkwardly down to the bar and harnessed himself clumsily to the chair. No reason to give anything away. The man turned and faced Asteroth with a smug expression painted like a child's drawing across his broad face.

"So, the mighty hath descended after all Asteroth. We meet at last, I am..."

Asteroth cut him off mid-sentence.

"I know who you are. Dispense with the theatrics, what do you want?"

Asteroth could see the words hit the man like whiplashes. This was turning out entirely differently than what he had anticipated. He took a sip from the nipple flask and smiled uneasily.

"I have information that is time-sensitive and valuable. Information that can be profitable for both of us if you act on it."

Asteroth didn't move a muscle at that and Mighty Mouse decided to push further, more confidently now. He sipped the F'Load again, wetted his lips.

"Before we go on, I must inform you that I have dispatched several solid-state mem-blocks to the largest news services, mem-blocks that are going to be unlocked unless I reset the password for them every day. So it would be in your best interest if you did what I said, hmm? Now, the information I have is very valuable and so it will require that you pay, in advance, 300 million UIT credits. To this credstick. And then I want 10 million every week for as long as the scheme runs. Lets call it silent money, the price you pay for not having me sell it on to someone else."

Asteroth nodded, looked around and nodded again. A broad smile spread on Mighty Mouse's face and he was about to say something else when he felt the string around his neck tightening, the single knot in the middle of it digging itself into his larynx. The smile turned to a panicked look of pain and fear and he moved his hands up to get the string away from his throat. Asteroth grabbed both his hands and pulled them down into his lap, pulling himself closer.

"Seems like I have rejected your offer. I may be forced to work with the likes of you, people who scoff at nothing to get money, people who will betray their own friends and kin. That does not mean that I am like you in any way. I am and will always be a Serco. That means loyalty, integrity and a very bad reaction to blackmail. The reaction you are seeing and feeling right now."

Mighty Mouse's tongue started coming out of his mouth and Asteroth nodded again. Pressure was taken off the string and he gasped a mighty gulp of air, looking confused and panicked at Asteroth's face very close to his own.

"Just to take your mind off the panicky information that is tumbling around in your head, I'll allay some of your worries concerning my future. The mem-blocks have been intercepted by agents known to me, I already know what it is you are trying to peddle me for slightly more, than what I paid for it at the source and yes, I have in fact bribed the guards that are so kind to watch just about anywhere else but here right now, ensuring that neither I nor my associate behind you will be in any trouble when he finishes the job he started less than a minute ago. So, a pleasure doing business with you traitor. William, make sure his body arrives at our current employer's doorstep."

The string was tightened again, and accompanied by feeble thrashing, Mighty Mouse watched the graceful exit by Asteroth as his focus narrowed and he passed out. With little effort, William Cutting stuffed Mighty Mouse into a Mylar bag, reached into the bag and pulled the straight razor he had grabbed from his pocket, across the throat of his victim, ending his life in a spatter of red, safely caught by the bag. No reason to make a mess. The communal area was once again a public space instead of an execution room and William hefted his bag of cargo towards the launch bay.

###

With a frightfully complex set of instructions, Asahel ended the input session. The machine chimed and the red diode on top of it winked out, the green one next to it activated. The lock had been opened. Asahel grinned and turned around to face the group of young people behind him; turned around to face the expectant face of Lycu in particular.

"There, the lock is opened."

"Impressive, very impressive. I think we have just the spot for you my young friend."

The old man standing in the very back had a deep rumbling voice that ensured he was heard even though he didn't speak very loud. The others had seemed very respectful around him; naturally Asahel did the same. Although most of his focus had been on Lycu.

"Thank you Sir."

"But you must be aware that once you accept, there is no way back. I need you to be absolutely sure that you are committing yourself to the cause."

Asahel looked at the gleaming face of Lycu, the gently curving line of her cheekbone, the braided hair and her slightly turned-up nose, followed her gaze to rest on the man.

"I am aware Sir. And I chose freely to join in," as long as Lycu is around he could have added.

"Very well, welcome to the PUPK young man. We are glad to have you on the team."

###

Nikan scowled massively at the Dau Senate security guard while the guard checked the licenses for the weapons that Nikan was carrying. In reality, the guard knew perfectly well that Nikan, as well as any member of the UPK, were allowed to carry personal weapons up to and including man-portable gauss canons almost anywhere on Dau station, the Senate itself being one notable exception. And Nikan knew that the guard knew and he also knew that the guard was stalling him in the vain hope of getting a bribe to speed things along. That was under no circumstances going to happen. Fifteen minutes of unnecessary harassment later, Nikan grabbed his weapons, strapped the gyrock-gun to his right leg and clicked the las-rifle onto its sling he had around his neck and shoulder, scowled some more at the guard and moved into the corridor he had wanted to be in, around half an hour ago. He walked down to the access panel that was closest to his destination and opened the security panel next to it. Strange, someone had opened the access panel about forty minutes ago and been in quite a hurry as well. They hadn't locked the panel after them at least. Nikan considered for a second and then grabbed his phone.

"Activate, Eggster."

The phone only rang once when the other end was picked up.

"Listen Eggs, I moved as fast as I could but it looks like someone were faster. Yours?"

The voice in the other end was tired but told him that nobody had been dispatched. Nikan nodded into the empty corridor and closed the phone. Possible intruders, he'd better go in rifle first. He opened the access panel as silently as he could, grabbed his las-rifle, checked the power-readout, activated the red dot sight and pointed it and his head and torso into the corridor. The red dot that indicated where the barrel of the las-rifle was pointed danced erratically on chrome tubes and dull gunmetal-grey hull panels but found nothing. He twisted as fast as he could and the dot ended on something else entirely. Two persons were bent over a third person and the red dot was now resting squarely between the shoulder blades of one of the two. Nikan had a clean shot but wasn't sure the two men were bad guys. And his obligations to the people of UIT, his warrior fellows of UPK and his general belief in humanity as a whole forced him to be absolutely sure.

"UPK officer. Stop your activity and present ID."

His effort at discovering the identity of the two persons was instantly rewarded when a very large-bore handgun appeared in the hand of the other man, not the one he had the red dot on. Nikan shifted his aim and almost without thinking depressed the trigger twice.

Blam, GLAM

He felt a furious pain as something smashed into his las-rifle, crushing it and pushing him out into the corridor. The las-rifle that had followed him from the very first day he had been recruited, not only because the UPK didn't have money to upgrade to the newer technology but also because of the fond memories he had with it, lay across his chest in a mangled heap of broken plastic and ruptured powercells. Quickly he unclipped the las-rifle and with a smooth movement born of countless hours of training, again, the UPK didn't have money for enough training ammunition and so the training consisted mostly of drawing the weapon quickly, he pulled his gyrock gun out in front of him, the weapon practicably humming with deadly potency in his hands. He briefly considered the immense danger he would expose himself to if he was to put his head and torso into the access panel again. Someone was in mortal danger, considerations for his own life was not a factor, it said so in the UPK training manual page 49 paragraphs 19 and 21. He shoved the gun into the corridor and pointed it in the rough direction of the two persons that had been standing. One of them was now pointing his gun at the head of the prone person and Nikan instantly fired his own gyrock.

Boom-swoosh-Crack-fwomp-Gung, the rocket apparently hit its mark and Nikan kept the gun trained on the route it had travelled, marked by a light smoke trail. The smoke cleared and Nikan could now see three persons prone, one of them pointing the large slugthrower he had used against Nikan before directly at him. Nikan pulled the trigger again and when the smoke cleared, the person was left without a head. With his left hand, he activated his UPK distress beacon to get the immediate response team to come to his location. In the meantime, he would go up and see if any of them were alive by now; hopefully the person he had been sent to help at least.

Damn. I was rather fond of that gun. Piece of outdated crap by modern standards, but that LasRifle was by far the most reliable weapon I ever had. Wouldn't have made it through a lot of Black Ops SNAFUs if I hadn't brought it along. Shame its gone, but at least it went out fighting.

I'll hold a private funeral later.

(Looks as though things are about to get... messy. Doubly so with PUPK getting involved. Successful amateurs are often more dangerous than unsuccessful professionals, at least as far as collateral damage is concerned.)

Chapter 33

The group floated in the fog that surrounded K-10, just off the massive iron roid that was the major avoid-point for the incoming convoys, thus avoiding getting entangled with them and incidentally keeping the station's traffic controllers happy. Mercy had started out restless and jittery but had now settled back in her seat and accepted that the assembly of the TGFT rescue fleet was going to take more time than she would have liked. The launch bay revolved again and disgorged a Revenant with a fairly large grinning shark's mouth on the lower front, around the gatling turret. Surbius piloted the Revenant over to the waiting group and parked next to Mercy, facing the station. They were nearly there; Ironstar, Shna, Lambin, Illuvia Acida,Morphix and Surbius would be the rescue squad with Ecka along for the ride in his battered Centaur Mk III providing overwatch along with tsreknor as well. The launch bay revolved the last time for Shna's fighter and with that, Ecka started boosting away from the station. Within seconds they were lost in the fog and hidden from the station. Not that they had been watched by anyone in particular.

###

Unlike the convoy that was slowly assembling in the assigned area in Dau Senate. The convoy had been classified as "Urgent", medium security with end destination Sedina L-2, Daltas Hold. The Valent-owned Connie that had jumped into Dau three hours earlier had only brought one item and that item had been transferred to the middle moth of the three moths that made up the convoy. Well, the shipping part of the convoy. With the flag set for medium security, it warranted two Warthog TD's as well as four light fighters for escort. Doubtlessly, the Vipers would be alerted as well for the passage through Latos at least. Chaakin had at first ignored that convoy as being too heavily guarded in relation to the value of the cargo but his interest had been piqued when the Valent ship appeared. Someone was willing to pay the mega-bucks it cost to have the part shipped as urgent and that alone made it interesting. He had checked the unofficial Corvus network and sure enough, it was flagged for one Valent built Tokomak control unit, whatever the hell that was, for delivery at Daltas Hold as fast as possible. Chaakin could deliver that, no problem at all.

He was about to finish the last of his Koffee when two very obvious plain-clothes policemen came into the Nova Cafe. They settled themselves on each side of the door and started observing everybody with no regard at all to the obviousness of their action, not that anyone seemed to notice them. Chaakin set the cup on the table and headed for the exit, expecting to be stopped at any second. He was, but not by the policemen inside. Outside, another pair was standing, brown "undercover" uniform a slab of conformity and lack of style contrasting with the current multi-coloured fashion that was prevalent in Dau. The left one smiled at Chaakin, the kind of smile that had been trained in front of a mirror to project security, comfort, trust and which in Chaakin's particular case, turned out as loathing. He put his hand out towards Chaakin.

"May I see your papers Sir?"

Chaakin stopped and considered for a second. In the pockets of his leather and fleece Old Terra World War II-style bomber jacket, he had several weapons hidden that could eliminate these two guards with only the slightest of noises and if that wasn't enough, his steel-toed boots both carried spring-loaded knife points for that extra kicking lethality if he seriously needed it. He considered using his fake unit insignia badge, that was concealing a fast-acting contact neuro-toxin on one guard, smash the fabric against his face with his left hand and then throw his right hand against the other guard, allowing the weighted piece of monomolecular wire to loop around the other guard's neck, cutting his head off in an instantaneous motion. Probably not worth it, the pigs would have either implants to record it all or the station's security would right now be training the hidden cameras on this location. He grabbed his papers from the inner pocket of his jacket.

"What is the problem?"

The cop scanned the papers with a palm-scanner before answering.

"We have been given information that some insurgents may be planning an attack on the station. They are targeting Itani and Serco citizens it seems, so we are rounding up all non-UIT nationals to ensure we can protect them sufficiently."

The cop moved the scanner to Chaakin’s face and a white line of light moved slowly across it.

"Stand still please, Sir. Just verifying your identity. We have also been warned of a lot of fake identities in circulation so I am sorry if this takes longer than normal.

Chaakin smiled thinly and waited until the scanner had finished. His papers were fake as well, but they should be able to pass any inspection. Which they did. The guard handed the papers back.

"Thank you Mr. C. Fletcher. Have a nice day."

The guard moved out of his way and Chaakin frowned for a second before moving away. That had been strange, very strange indeed. But ultimately not his problem, he had a convoy to intercept in Latos and a posse to gather. He would call Ardenus from his ship.

###

Eggert came at a pace that could almost be classified as running. He had responded to Nikan's emergency beacon and got the rudimentary before moving down to the corridor at the highest speed he could muster. He reached the designated corridor and almost gagged. The smell of gunpowder, blood and crushed entrails was heavy in the air and stopped Eggert in his tracks as suddenly as a wall of flame would have. Several persons in the dark green guard-duty uniforms of the UPK were manhandling someone out of the access hatch and onto a stretcher where they covered the body in a black zip-lock plastic bag. The body joined two other identically black-bag covered stretchers. Eggert moved over to the soldiers and asked for Nikan. Instead of talking to Eggert, the soldier nodded towards the open access hatch instead where a smashed las-rifle was slung on top of a couple of cracked powercells. Eggert stuck his head into the hatch and almost gagged again with the smell inside that was even worse than outside. Four men were crouching inside the corridor with streaks of blood and gore painting the deck-plates of the corridor between the access hatch and the men.

"Nikan?"

One of the men turned and looked at Eggert before he walked carefully towards him.

"Eggs, you owe big time. Three stiffs and a vegie. I think the vegie is your contact though."

"What happened?"

"Two baddies were doing some baddie stuff. They resisted arrest and I had to pacify them. The last stiff has been killed by some kind of large bore projectile weapon, a single slug in the head. I think one of the baddies did it, before I arrived in the corridor. Not sure he would have survived anyway though, he was pretty badly burned."

"Guess we won't get much out of them?"

"The forensics guys have all their papers and all. Looks like unknowns but I'll let you know if anything turns up. Where do you want the vegie?"

"Let me see her."

Eggert moved over to the person that was prone and knelt next to her. It was Chi, unconscious and badly burned but definitely Tohasandra Chi. Eggert wiped some of the gore off her right ear and checked the small access port behind it. He inserted his own pda's dataport to Chi's brain interface and asked for a status. It came up with a single sentence instead of the usual bauble of information; Contact PA, reward will be provided. He turned towards Nikan, his eyes fixed on the readout.

"Do you have a secure medical facility I can borrow?"

Eggert looked up at Nikan who looked back with a sheepish smile.

"Sure, but you'll pick up the tab. We don't have credits for it right now."

Eggert nodded and got up.

"I am sure we can come to some kind of arrangement. Put it on my company account to start with, I'll figure out how to pay for it later."

Nikan nodded and started to move outside, when a call from Eggert stopped him."

"Nik, thanks man."

Nikan waved his hand in acknowledgement and moved out to make the arrangements for the vegie. Ehm, for Ms Chi. And he'd better call ahead and ask them to turn on the heat at the facility. Last time he had been in it, it had been mothballed.

###

It had started so well but the situation had now degraded into something resembling controlled chaos. The initial Itani victory had completely stunned the Serco headquarters but then the third Serco Fleet was dispatched from Geira Rutilus' reserve force restoring some kind of order. Cranston kept still in the back of the room and merely watched as the red dots connected with the blue dots and the blue dots scattered across the Deneb system or vanished altogether. Some of them turned grey instead of blue, indicating a destroyed enemy platform. Soon, the wormhole sector as well as the vital roid systems that bordered up to it, were Serco dominated and populated with red dots. That brought some peace in the headquarters that lasted until a large Itani force was discovered and had to be dealt with. The next six hours were a blur of Serco attacks, Itani counterattacks, Serco defences, Itani withdrawals with no apparent gains or losses at all. Cranston had stopped counting the attacks, had stopped following the ONE pilots and was almost giddy with fatigue from watching so much information for such a long time when someone gently padded his shoulder. He looked up and up at Aelius who smiled down at him.

"Looks like we won't be able to help you for a while there little buddy. You'd better go back and tell your bosses that they have to make space safe from pirates with the resources they have themselves."

Cranston nodded and got up to leave. He looked down at Aelius' outstretched hand and shook it wearily.

"Looks like it. I can see you have your own fight to fight first. If you get the situation under control, we'd still like to have your assistance."

Aelius smiled loopsidedly, a smile that said a thousand things, among those that it would take all their resources for a long time to get this situation under control. Cranston walked down to his Valkyrie and readied for launch and his back-brief to the boss.

ooc: Holy flying monkeys this RP thread is still GOING? It must be the longest RP thread ever!

The thread started in January and is still going with once-weekly update.

And it'll continue until I run out of ideas...... Or gets sent to some crappy part of the globe or gets bored, whatever comes first.

Nice to see you back on the forums Leebs.

yeah, well now that I'm caught up with your best story, please do wrap it up.

Chapter 34

The dreamscape was unfathomably complex and deep, details covering every surface detail with even those details made up of even smaller and even more delicate details; like the complexity found in a fractal image. The girl, the term girl loosely associated with the term normally used to describe a human being, had been running as fast as she could in the mud of the fractals, the infinite complexity of her own skin melding and tearing from the surface as fast as she interfaced with it, changing her, adapting her, dissolving her until only her mental agony was smeared across the dreamscape like a whisper in a gale. The gale was ever-present, listening to the whisper, the many whispers of the dreamscape He had created and trapped his victims in. He relished in the near divine powers He could subject the girls to here, the universe where He was God. A light pulsed twice, forcing him to abandon the dreamscape and leave his victims to the desolation of his presence being removed, their reason for existing torn away. He re-emerged into the real universe and looked down at his last two victims, young women with a bio-feedback holo-interface brain-meld, interfaces that was now connected to Peytros' innocuously looking computer. The young man with the innocent idiot savant's half smile permanently fixed on his face let his fingers dance across the interface field and sealed the girls inside their own heads forever before he disconnected himself and took the call.

"Yes?"

"Pey, we have a voy inbound Latos. Pretty big one, I need your help."

Peytros nodded, knowing that Chaakin couldn't see him, but for his own benefit.

"Not a problem Rave, just tell me where to assemble and I'll get the X ready."

"I need you for something different Pey. Something where your particular skills can be the difference between failure and success. However, we need to act now. Contact me from your ship and I'll explain on the way."

Peytros didn't answer and instead closed the connection. He stroked one of the groaning girls on the cheek and gathered his things into some of the many pockets of his greatcoat and left for the launch bay. He had left the girls with a small present; after all it wasn't fun to torment them if he wasn't there to savour it. Instead, they would pass from ecstasy to ecstasy with an image of his smiling visage peering down on them from the totality of the sky until their bodies gave out. He was after all an artist and nobody could call him in-considerate!

###

Fletholm flexed his fingertips against each other in front of his face while he listened to Eggert's report. The cup of tea in front of him was supposed to calm him, and the ferocious beast in his belly that only surfaced and roared in times of trouble. Half of it was in his belly already but it had not helped one iota. Another fiery burp of acid forced itself up from his stomach and through his oesophagus where it dissolved some of the tissue. Fletholm grunted with pain from the efforts of his stomach to eat himself from the inside out and raised an arm to halt Eggert. Fletholm used the break to open the lower drawer in his desk and rummaged around for the white bottle that was supposed to be there. With a small feeling of soon-to-be pain relief joy, he found the bottle and opened the lid. He gulped two mouthfuls of the acrid liquid and washed the evil taste away with some more tea before looking back at Eggert.

"So, what you are telling me then is that these terrorists came out of nowhere and disappeared to roughly the same place?"

Eggert grinned at the short and concise analysis of his half-hour briefing.

"To cut it short; yes Sir. However, we do have a couple of leads that will hopefully flush out some more information. I have a hunch that the murder of the UPK officer in the diplomatic launch bay, is somehow connected to the case."

"Right, this smells of trouble all right. You keep an eye on the progress and keep me informed. How is the PA spy by the way?"

"Ehm, diplomat Sir."

Fletholm waved his hand in annoyance. He knew perfectly well who and what the PA pilot was and didn't particularly feel like being diplomatic in his own damned office.

"She is still comatose. We are arranging for her to be transported back to grey and into the custody of the Alliance."

"Did you get a trawl off her?"

"No Sir, it seems she was scrambled somehow, maybe damaged beyond sentience. The trawl equipment we found on the dead guys that Nikan, ehm, Captain Hardrive dispatched, was likewise empty."

"Right, I expect the transfer to be handled with utmost delicacy. If we are connected to PA, it will ruin our reputation in grey. Now sod off and leave me with my tea."

Eggert mock-saluted and closed the door behind him as he exited.

###

Trulo checked the connections on his space suit extra carefully before entering the airlock. Normally, the suits would be serviced every two times they had been outside or at the very least once every week but the time hadn't really been available for it. Nor the spare parts. The main power conduit's reinforcement cover had been torn at some time and he was extra careful that the silicon paste he had applied to protect it still covered the cables. When he had finished with the front, he turned and let the tall Bracturian check his suit on the rear. Dietlam finished and padded Trulo on the shoulder for confirmation.
He didn't wait a second and started cycling the air out of the airlock. The machine groaned until the air was so thin that sound transmission stopped being audible and instead became a low hum he could feel through the soles of his boots. The machine had never been designed to draw power from the jury-rigged assembly of batteries they had dragged down here, but it would have to do. Just two cycles was all they needed. The lamp on top of the outside door of the airlock turned to green, indicating that the pressure was the same on both sides of the door, that is vacuum. The lamp on the other side, the inwards side door, had turned red a while ago in response to the lowering pressure in the airlock. Trulo knew that when he opened the outer door's manual lock, the inner door would lock automatically and prevent a blowout if someone was stupid enough to forget he had an open door to vacuum. The outer door swung open and the three-man team swung out and clamped geckoed feet and hands onto the outer xithricite skin of the station while their suits conducted an integrity control. They waited until the suits had chimed a soft tone of all clear before they swung down towards level 14 to see if they could find where the beast had entered the station, and see if they could find any clues as to how they could get rid of it.

###

Aero Hitro was also busy, was also in a spacesuit and also on the outside of the station but with a completely different mission. The master of Daltas Hold was soon to be an ex-master if his plan worked. It was kinda desperate, but desperate times called for desperate measures. He was in no illusions that whenever, or maybe even if ever, the masters of Xang Xi realised the extent of the damage on Daltas Hold, he would be sacked in extremis, the kind of sacking that legends or rather nightmares among junior execs were made of. The kind of sacking that involved the deepest pits of the xithricite mines and a partially functioning worksuit. And when they had finished sacking him and tried to figure out what had really happened, they'd figure out how much he had swindled them for and for how long. And probably how badly he had handled the power coupler situation, not to mention the attempt at covering his tracks by unleashing the Bear-Dog. Then they’d pull him back and sack him twice over again. If only those fucking incompetents had unloaded the beast at level 17 as requested, that would at least have killed off the damned engineers that had smart-mouthed him so much. Oh well, water under the bridge and all that. He jumped over to the free-floating Centurion and crawled into the cockpit awkwardly, with the fairly big duffel bag he had in tow. He stowed it in the small compartment behind the pilot's seat and closed the canopy before he plugged his suit into the ship's life support system. As with most light fighters, the Centurion didn't have a pressurised cockpit but that didn't matter for this short trip. He activated the engine and smiled at the gentle humming it produced. At least this part of his plan was working correctly. He triggered the two devices he had installed in his quarters and imagined the giant walls of flame that had just started from the devices and devour anything in its path, eradicating his life completely and in the resulting destruction, allow his re-birth. Hell, he'd even see if he could join PA; that would be poetic justice. He started boosting for the jump point, just an unmarked centurion in grey space.

Chapter 35

Since time started, homecomings had been something to look forward to or even celebrate. Depending on the situation, some civilisations took it up a notch. The Romans held their giant Triumphs to celebrate the successful return of a conquering hero, the old Americans held their ticker-tape parades and even though the return of John and the others didn't exactly warrant a parade in their honour, they at least hoped for a warm drink and maybe a morsel or two of food. Their moods had at least lightened significantly when they came to the lighted part of the section. John moved on ahead, stealthsuit fully engaged to scout for any unpleasantries but had found none. He opened the heavy door to the communal area they lived in and was greeted by three young women clad in, what could by only a massive stretch of his imagination be classified as, dresses, each of them carrying food in one hand and grabbing for him with their other. He let himself be pulled into the room and sloughed his jacket as if it had been some kind of reptilian second skin, revealing the bulging muscles that had been hidden underneath his clothes. With one girl on each arm, he smiled his Galaxy-wide-famous John Eldritch™ Smile at the third girl as she slid down lower in front of him and helped him shed the tool belt that had kept his pants up. In front of his Corvus-style mirrored sunglasses, a fourth young woman appeared like a mirage out of nothing, silk billowing around her, covering everything she needed covering, exposing everything he needed exposed. Rose danced closer and ended up directly in front of him, her body heat from the dance radiating onto his naked torso, and dropped herself into his arms. He shuffled the girl on his right over to the left side and caught Rose with his right arm in the small of her back, bent her over and found it empty and cold. He frowned, surely the others must have returned from the food foray by now; they only needed to go one level down to come to the algae vats. Going on instinct, he pulled his handgun out of the holster and kept it close to his side.

"Hello, anybody?"

No answer, no sounds. He moved into the communal room and looked around for signs of fighting, trouble, anything that could explain the absence of people and came up blank. He moved over to the sleeping roll that was adjacent to his own and found it to be exactly as he had left it, or rather as Rose had left it. He bent low and felt for any residual heat but only noticed the lingering smell of her. Gramps and the others came into the community area as well.

"Where the hell is everybody?"

Buzz stated the question bluntly, knowing that the answer would never be forthcoming. John shrugged and dumped his kit on his bunk before he turned around again. He was about to come with a witty remark when the frigid air was torn asunder by a long keening that ended in a bloodcurdling roar.

"Rose."

John grabbed his kit again and looked at Buzz and Gramps. They too were ready and with no further considerations, they were off towards the algae vats and that awful sound.

###

NOTE: This following piece has been published prior in another thread. Thanks to the original author (Union Subspace Newscast) for shoving the thought into my head!

Asahel had never been so nervous before in his life. Not even when he finally had found the courage to ask Lycu out, hell not even before when she had introduced him to the Big Leader himself. This operation had all the requirements for going pearshaped fast and even though he had trained hard for the mission, he wasn't sure it would work. The algorithms that he had designed to crack the lock had worked in the lab but now they would be put to the test in earnest. He stole a glimpse over at Lycu who was bent over the archaic looking codebreaker device he had created, eyes focused on the readout and left hand twitching in concentration. He loved when she did that. With his body and soul. He had told her that he would die for her and with the usual mischief in her eyes she had replied that he would get his turn.

The codebreaker turned from red to green and Lycu looked over at him, surprise in her eyes. None of them had thought it would actually happen, none of them had anticipated that they would actually get through the security that surrounded the UIT defence network. They all hesitated; this was the point of no return. Asahel nodded slowly, this would indeed be his moment. He grabbed the assault rifle firmly with both hands and rose from the prone position, looked down at the assembled youths and grinned fiercely. A Death's grin.

"For the glory of UIT, Death to the traitors!"

That was apparently the icebreaker that was needed and the others rose as well. They opened the half-metre thick xithricite door and peeked behind it into the command nexus of the UIT border defence network. Around fifteen semi-bored operators were sitting at the controls; no one had noticed the intruders. That ended when Asahel emptied his rifle into the back of three of them.

###

William Cutting walked without a care in the Known World down the corridor with an anti-grav sled in tow. The black reinforced woven-plastic bag on top of it was about the size of a body, was filled with roughly the same volume as a body and drew about as many stares as if it had been a body. On Corvus stations: none. A quick exchange of credits for notes at the dock had ensured that the only force on Corvus’ station in Sedina, the customs police, wouldn’t bother William. He stopped in an intersection to let a fairly large group of Serco pilots pass him by. He hummed an old Itani warsong and eyed each warrior in turn as they passed. An enigmatic smile on his lips ensured that they thought him sufficiently insane that it wasn't worth the effort to be offended. Once the pilots had passed, he resumed his walk towards the particular bar that he was headed for. The Pirate's Bones, sufficiently piratesque for the grisly barter that was about to take place. William pushed the anti-grav sled into the bar and used it as a battering ram to clear his way to a table in the rear of the main room. A man in a grey jumpsuit, seated at that particular table, looked at William, at the sled and back to William. He waited for William to say something but when that didn't happen, he looked down into his Koffee cup before swallowing his annoyance.

"What do you want?"

William shrugged and produced a credit card sized document, read it himself and nodded before he tossed it onto the table. The man grabbed it with his free hand and brought it to his face, sipping Koffee at the same time. The document was a Bounty Hunter's license, made up to William Cutting and signed by the Marshall of Dau. The man nodded in return and handed the license back to William.

"And once more, what do you want?"

"A bounty off course."

"Please tell me that isn't a corpse?"

"It sure is."

William reached over and unzipped the black bag, exposing the head of what used to be Mighty Mouse. The words "Delivered by KAOS" were burned into the forehead with some narrow-beam laser device that had scoured the flesh away from the bone and etched the letters into the skull itself. The work had been done fairly recently and the smell of burned flesh and bone was pungent, mixing with the slight hint of rot and decay. The man in grey covered his mouth and William tactfully covered the corpse, smiling the same smile he had shown the Serco pilots. He held his hand out towards the grey-clad man.

"I was told that the UPK pays the bounty on behalf of the UIT once the prey is delivered?"

The man nodded and with one hand in front of his mouth produced a cred stick that he handed William. With no further pause, William mock-saluted and walked out of the bar, leaving the sled with its repugnant cargo behind him to the protests of the man in grey. Now he just had to deliver the UIT cred stick to Asteroth and then he would be allowed to go back to killing traders. And whatever came across his path.

###

Peytros answered the hail from the station's traffic control with as much politeness as a UIT-trained diplomat-trader and was allowed to dock at the lower commercial centre of Epsilon Hold. He steered his Valkyrie X-1 into the berth and allowed the clamps to secure his ship before the revolving bay twisted and caused his ship to come to the atmosphere side of the station. He checked his watch and smiled, ample time for what he needed to do. He requested and received a direct link to the station's trade computer. The dockhands, seeing that he was in a fighter and had requested a secure link, assumed that he was a courier and left him alone, which was fine with Peytros. If they had opened his canopy, they'd have recognised his face on one of the wanted posters that was everywhere on the station's public areas and although that could be funny, it would have to wait for another day.
The fake sentience of the station's main computer smothered him in security protocols and interface options, all of which he swept aside almost without thought. He didn't need all the paraphernalia most people needed for communications with the computer. He sent a small worm, covered in virus towards the main interface layer, knowing very well that it would be intercepted and stopped. Under the cover of that worm he sent the real attack, a direct link to his own viral form.
As expected, the mainframe detected the virus and the worm and dispatched resources to kill the intruders to let the real message through. Peytros was in. He spread himself in the mainframe and took control of all the systems he needed for the task he had been given. He detected two launch bays of sector Echo-12 revolve and spew their complements of fighters into near space. The other four bays held fighters as well, in this case the VPR immediate response force, the IRT and the quick response force, the QRF. Another two fighters waited to be slotted into the two, now free, bays, probably the next patrol going out. Peytros locked all six launch bays and set the lock with a repeating fractal code of his own design. He didn't have a key for unlocking it and he doubted very much that anyone in existence would be able to convince the computer that it should stop solving the puzzle and start functioning again ever. With a sly grin, he sent a query from the station's mainframe to the VPR HQ mainframe and started hacking his way in. This was not going to be as easy. But at least the snakes were safely locked away in their cage now.

Chapter 36

As with any situation where a group was moving into unknown territory against unknown opposition or into an unknown situation, the clever way to approach was to have one of their three-man team scout ahead, while the other two would provide cover with their rifles. Once safely down in the general area, they would all fan out and see what had interfered with the objective, making plans as they went and ending with a coordinated assault on the target.
John had instantly killed that approach and instead had charged headlong towards the algae vats with as much speed as he could safely run at. The metal of the inter-level ladder provided an excellent slide and he landed on the lower deck floor plates with a loud clang. Instinctually he crouched and scanned the corridors, omni-rifle held at the ready, while the two others caught up. The path to the algae vats was marked by glow-tubes that had been dropped along the floor in red and yellow, the glow-tube colours they had found in abundance in the old storage room. The twin soft report of thick-soled boots behind him activated John again and he started moving at a half-crouch, rifle held at the ready in front of him. Another immense roar blasted down the corridor from the room ahead and the ancient prey-instincts that had helped his monkey-like ancestors so much on the savannahs of Africa, spiked him with adrenaline and made him look around for a tree he could climb.
After half a second, he forced himself forward again, now more cautious and ready for combat. A long tearing sound was followed by a loud clanging noise as what sounded like deck-plates being tossed onto deck-plates, half-grunts following the tearing sounds. John reached the entrance to the algae vat room and peeked inside, crouching low. The giant water-filled algae vats that made up the main attractions in the room, translucent plasteel containers with a heavy green coloration, were illuminated from the top with some powerful light source, maybe directly beamed from the white glare of Sedina itself. Around the bottom, where John was peeking out, only the flickering light of terminals illuminated the vats and supporting structures in the garish pink and yellow colours of the screen pictures that flashed on and off repeatedly; the image of Uncle Xi with the caption "Service is momentarily out of function. Have no fear, Uncle Xi is here." running across his face. Across the room, John spotted the beast that had roared before and
lifted the heavy Corvus custom made multi-barrelled knife-missile launcher, aligned the weapon roughly on the beasts broad hairy back before he looked through the multi-spectrum targeting scope and locked the gun's silicate brain on the beast before he looked over the edge of the scope. With a loop-sided grin, the famous John Eldritch™ grin that made women swoon and made pirates run in terror, he depressed the trigger and released the missile to its own targeting process. Less than a hundredth of a millisecond later, the missile tore from the launcher and impacted itself inside the beast with enough force to break through the armour of a Sercan Wildebeest class troop carrier. The beast turned with supernatural haste and with yet another roar, the beast showed its mighty fangs, each half a metre long and glistening with mono-molecular acid, to John Eldritch™ who merely fired two more missiles that homed in and impacted in the top of its mouth, blowing the top of its head off. John mock-blew across the front of the gun and grinned again.

"Next."

The girl that appeared on his arm could have been pulled directly from a poster magazine and when the two other companions looked out into the room with scared looks on their faces, the girl promptly dropped herself onto his arm and leaned back, secure in his ar..
froze in absolute terror. His weapon was quickly forgotten and he half-turned to make a run for it down the corridor he had arrived from. Only the presence of Gramps and Buzz stopped him and he hefted the omni-rifle for security. The beast across the room hadn't spotted them yet, busy as it was with tearing deckplates off before tossing them away. When it had torn one off, it would insert one of its four arms into the hole and grab for whatever it was hunting, a roar punctuating the disappointment that arrived with the successful flight of its prey. Again, it rose with a 900 kg deckplate in two arms, tossed it over its own massive head and fell to its knees again to fish for prey.

"Son of a Nyrian whore, that is a Betheshee Bear-Dog."

The whisper of Buzz was almost inaudible over the ruckus of the beast but apparently it was enough. The beast stopped and lifted its head to sniff at the air, slowly turning towards them. It spied the three companions and spread its arms wide in a challenging combat stance, mouth opening wide in yet another roar. The smell of carnivore breath was fearsome and if it hadn't been for the many layers of clothing that John had over his face, he would have gagged. Instead he lifted the omni-rifle to his shoulder and aimed along its barrel, centring the weapon on the beast's chest. The beast charged and John depressed the trigger, spraying a cloud of flechettes into the beast's stomach where most bounced off harmlessly. John cursed and moved the selector switch down to solid slug but too late. The beast was too close and would impact on him before he could shoot it, and would tear him apart, and then his friends. Behind the beast, he spotted a mop of hair that peeked up and looked towards him; Rose.

###

The TGFT liberation force had moved across Azek with no problems on the way, not that they had expected it. The wormhole was right ahead, and one after another, they activated their jump-engines and shoved the ships into un-space and towards Latos. Morphix was the last ship to enter and while he waited, his system started beeping the unwelcome warning tone of a targeting radar lock. Frowning, he checked his radar list and came up with his teammates and the UIT border security turrets as the only contacts. His threat warning started beeping incessantly; a missile had locked onto him from somewhere. Luckily, at the same time, his engine had sufficient power and his ship forced itself into un-space and into safety from the strike. When he entered Latos, he opened a secure channel to tsreknor.

"ts, I just had a missile lock from what I think it the border turrets. Have you heard anything?"

Morphix knew that his long service to the UIT state and people was enough to supply him with gold-level access anywhere in UIT space and definitely would keep the border turrets from engaging him. In a slightly distorted voice, an effect of the scrambler, ts answered.

"No, and I didn't detect it either. Check your system to see if it was a system malfunction?"

"Will do."

Morphix checked the ship's system and came up with all-green across the board. He sent the result to ts and stopped worrying about it. Nothing he could do about it anyway. The group jumped into Latos O-12 and immediately scanned the sector; all clear. The group moved in a disorderly group towards the roids, to a particular icy roid. When they had assembled in Dau, they had brainstormed how they would dig Hortan out. Lambin had suggested blasting the ice away with a Teller-Ulam mine but Surbius had courteously suggested that the electromagnetic pulse would short Hortan's system and leave him to certain death if they couldn't get him out. Eventually they had agreed upon using two sets of swarms to blast their way down and then use the engine of two ships to melt the rest. Illuvia and ts had the swarms, and would run off to re-load when they had fired their weapons into the roid, leaving it to Mercy and Morphix to burn their way to the yellow Behemoth.

###

Neagoth cursed the UIT official that had been instrumental in testing, evaluating and eventually purchasing the slightly less-than-useful lasrifle that was the standard armament of the UPK security forces. Lying with his head and shoulders buried halfway into the remains of a noodle-purveyor's mobile store, he looked down at the read-out again, dead, and ejected the power cell, rubbed the poles hard against his uniform and inserted the cell again. Amazing, two more shots by rubbing himself. He laughed out loud, which was immediately greeted with three explosions as more projectiles smashed into the synth-wood cover. He couldn't stop smiling broadly, maniacally even.
He had been on a standard patrol as part of his training time with UPK to the main security vault, the central nerve-centre of UIT border defence when they had spotted two young men that looked like they were messing with an access computer console. The squad leader had walked over to them, not a worry in the World. He opened his mouth to talk to them, but before any words came out, a string of bullets impacted on his chest and face from the right side, spraying blood, tissue and uniform pieces all over the bulkhead. The young UPK recruits had frozen and Neagoth had seen, inside his head, the massive clusterfuck evolve as the shooter had moved the string of bullets towards the recruits. Neagoth had jumped forward and tackled two of the recruits into the noodle store, thus getting them in cover.
He laughed again, looked at the two scared recruits and shook his head. He grabbed the lasrifle and moved it close to his chest, exhaled slowly, inhaled sharply and then rolled left, out of the cover and moved the rifle up to his shoulder. In front of him, kneeling and looking about as scared as the two recruits behind him, was a young man with a very large automatic weapon that looked Ineubis-made. Neagoth squeezed the trigger and burned a hole through the head of the gunman, flashing the contents of his head out of the back of the head in a burst of super-heated brain-steam, switched his sights to the other youths and sighed. In true "I am a Gangsta Hero" style, one of the two youths had pulled two guns that he was firing sideways at Neagoth with as much efficiency as could be expected. Another slow squeeze of the trigger burned a hole through the upper lip of the youth and killed him on the spot. The last youth looked desperately around and grabbed the nearest person, a woman. He lifted his gun to the woman's temple and started shouting something Neagoth couldn't hear. He re-sighted and depressed the trigger, nothing. Once more, the lasrifle had shown itself to be slightly more useful than an equivalent mass of Jell-O, apart from the fact that you could actually eat the Jell-O.

"………….hands on head and stand up."

The ringing in Neagoth's ears slowly subsided and the words started coming through. How the hell was he supposed to stand up with his hands behind his head? Slowly, carefully, he got up, stumbled two steps forward and folded his hands behind his neck in submission.

"Move over here and depress those two red buttons at the same time traitor."

Neagoth frowned; traitor? How was he a traitor? He moved over to the panel and looked the youth in the eyes.

"I am going to have to use my arms for that."

With a nervous nod, the youth agreed to Neagoth's suggestion, allowing him to use his hands. Neagoth unfolded his hands, closed his eyes halfway, grabbed the handle of his Katana that was slung in a concealed sheaf on his back and with a single fluid motion that would have made Hattori Hanzo blink with recognition, he cut through the arm that held the gun to the hostage's head. The woman broke free and twisted to the side, allowing Neagoth to bring the sword down hard on the youth's shoulder, cleaving his torso to the bellybutton. With a focused pull, he ripped the sword out and returned to his Kendo stance. Without taking his eyes off the carnage he had just wrought, he pulled his radio out, thumbed the correct frequency and called UPK HQ. The voice on the other end sounded tired.

"This is TGFT councillor Neagoth on patrol with UPK patrol 22A reporting in. Three downed UPK officers, suspected two or all three of them dead, an unknown number of civvies wounded along with three dead insurgents. We have a situation, requesting assistance."

###

Chaakin had the strike force lined up in Latos, waiting for his arrival from Dau. He passed the two Vipers that had just jumped into the sector and logged their presence for further tactics. A Warthog and a Centurion Rev C, an inexperienced and an experienced pilot as the Vipers always did. They hailed him with a friendly hail and he hailed them back; no need to blow this cover IFF identity for nothing. He jumped to the large Xang Xi station in sector C-2 to check on Peytros. He found the pilot’s ship docked and with only a little difficulty, he initiated a secure line and sent a standard greeting.

"What up Rave?"

"Are we go on the station?"

"Yeah, locked as an oyster. No luck on the Viper mainframe though but I'll keep trying."

"Not a priority. Just keep them locked up."

"I know, but it could be fun."

Chaakin grinned and logged off, that part of the plan was secured. Now for the strike force itself. Once more he boosted outwards towards the 3k mark.

Chapter 37

Cat and Atice jumped to the Latos-Azek wormhole in tandem, both of them scanning the sector immediately upon re-entering real-space as per Viper standard procedure, finding the area empty of ships. They were supposed to meet a medium security convoy that had requested VPR assistance, standard for passage through grey.
A single Warthog jumped through and Atice sent a standard hail, IFF showing the pilot to be a law abiding UIT citizen. The pilot responded and they watched as he jumped out of the sector, his trajectory suggesting the big station at N-15. Cat went through the different scanning modes with the same efficiency and single-mindedness as a machine. In some regards, that was very true of her being, her self. When the neural virus had erased her emotional states and reset her hormonal "imbalances", the same virus had created space for the brainpal to take over and utilise bigger parts of Cat's self. In effect, the person that was Cat was deeply buried inside her head with the machine evaluating and deciding what was allowed to surface and what was not. The same efficiency noticed the incoming signal from Atice and allowed the information to be decrypted.

"Cat, I hope you aren't taking Shlim's leaving too badly. You had a thing together, right?"

Cat allowed the information to be disseminated, noted the heightened activity in several locations of her brain, activity that her brainpal efficiently and ruthlessly quenched with a counter-flood of hormones. The self that had been Cat before the virus, wilted and withdrew before the onslaught, gave up and allowed her brainpal to answer for her.

"The past tense is correct. I am now fully operational again."

There was a small pause before Atice responded, slightly longer than she would have anticipated from the encoding/decoding. That is, if he felt a need to respond at all.

"Ehm, right. Listen, if you need to talk or anything, just look me up okay?"

The suppressed parts of Cat's brains tried to yell out but in vain.

"Acknowledged."

The convoy jumped in at that moment and spared Atice further effort at small-talk while they waited.

###

The Border Defence System was managed by the quasi-military organisation known as Securicor, an UIT-wide security specialist company that provided most of UIT's stations with penal facilities as well as the obligatory rent-a-cops that littered most communal areas like dandruff; as well liked and sought after too. The UIT division of Securicor, better known as SUIT, had been very successful in squeezing money out of Senate, especially after the recent surge of pirates in Grey space. Even so, SUIT had sought to minimise costs while at the same time delivering the absolute bare essentials to keep the profits at an absolute maximum; it was rumoured that Xang Xi was the main stockowner.
To start with, the BDF turrets had been manned, then remote piloted and with the latest iteration of savings, the pilots had been cut away and replaced by Valent produced robotic artificial intelligences. The targeting procedure still required a human operator, but where there were three humans per turret previously, now each operator would handle an entire sector.
One of the major savings had been in reducing the amount of control stations, from the initial seven to the present one station, from the previous fifteen operators at each control station to the current nine at the nexus station in Azek. Seven operators would control their own sector with up to 12 border defence turrets each, one watch keeper who would collect information from all sectors and one technician in case anything went wrong. That last person would have been immensely handy at this time, had he been willing that is. The spray of bullets from the PUPK’s guns had ripped thumb-sized holes in the operators as they had been intended to, but as with most automatic fire, more than half the projectiles hit something that wasn't supposed to be able to take the force of six millimetres of highly pure xithricite alloy that smashed into it at speeds just above mach one.
Asahel did his best and tried to get the control station for Verasi under control but the interface had been pierced by two projectiles and only sputtered once in a while with an electric discharge in protest.

"I think this one works."

Asahel looked over and saw Lycu wipe blood and brain-matter off one of the other screens, the one that said Azek Inferior in large letters over the display. He moved over and quickly looked at the controls. Nothing seemed to be broken; most of the bullets that had killed the operator had been fired from below and sent the slugs into the bulkhead over and behind the machines after they had done their destructive job inside the operator.
He pushed the status button on the main control panel and saw several reports tick in. All twelve defence bots were online and ready, awaiting command. A shot hammered through the silence. He flinched and looked over in the direction of the noise and saw two of the PUPK soldiers discharge their handguns into the back of the head of a surviving guard. Another guard lay on the ground, head likewise smashed apart. Asahel turned and looked at the display, at the reflection of Lycu in the display to be correct. He didn't care about the guards, he didn't care about PUPK, he didn't care about the Itani or Serco for that sake. But he'd do anything for Lycu, anything.
He accessed the targeting software and changed the search parameters to display Itani and Serco as hostiles and invaders. He pressed the enter button and leaned back, waited for someone to jump into Azek. He wasn't long in waiting, an outbound convoy contained several Itani and Serco pilots and the defence bots quickly acquired them as targets. A warning appeared on his screen, asking him if he wanted to proceed with the destruction. He looked over to his right and smiled at Lycu, who reached over and pressed the yes option. She grinned and reached over for him, hugged him and kissed him. He was in heaven, a heaven framed by the sharp reports of handguns firing, the heavy smell of cordite, blood, entrails and faeces, the flickering lights of smashed controls stations, but heaven nonetheless. He reached over and started working on the Ukari defence system, Lycu's hand a warm presence of happiness, of joy on his shoulder.

###

Nikan tried to sort out the information in his head but came up with a lot of new leads and no answers. He had handed Ms Chi over to the two serious-looking PA pilots without a single word and was now headed back to the headquarters for a new assignment and a new lasrifle. The entrance had at one time been imposing but was now just yet another run-down storefront in the communal area of Dau Senate. With the budget as tight as the current one, they sincerely didn't have any extra cash for paint or even for a new door to replace the one that had jammed shut a week ago. He was about to wave at the guards outside when a young woman walked up to one of the guards. Nikan grinned; When he had been a recruit and been on main-door guard duty, the local girls had also walked up to him and tried to lure him to all sorts of...
The thought was never finished as the entrance to UPK disappeared in a massive cloud of fire and smoke that tore the girl as well as the two guards apart and smashed the only functioning door off its hinges. Nikan was tossed away form the force of the blast and found himself with his head buried inside a barrel of fermented soy-protein. He pulled himself out, wiped the stinking grey sludge out of his eyes and looked over at the entrance. Four young men with assault rifles were moving towards the smoking entrance, obviously not UPK. He pulled his pistol out and shouted at the young men.

"UPK officer. Stop your unlawful act and put your hands in the air at once."

His shout was met by a fusillade of bullets as the four men fired their rifles in his direction. Screams behind him indicated that although he hadn't been hit, someone else had. He dropped behind the barrel and clutched the pistol tight, checked the magazine and shook his head. Three slugs left, this was not his lucky day for sure. He twisted to the right and brought the weapon up, centered it on the man furthest to the right and squeezed the trigger. Boom-swoosh-Crack-fwomp-Gung, the report of the gun was deafening. The gyrock impacted high on the left thigh and blew the limb off completely, the targeted man became a prone screaming bulk in less than a second.
His buddy aimed his rifle at Nikan and let off another long burst of high-velocity slugs that smashed into the deck-plates, the barrel, the bulkhead, the helmet and just about anywhere but into Nikan, who calmly changed to this new target, centered on the stomach and squeezed another slug off. Boom-swoosh-Crack-fwomp-Gung, the gyrock hit high and to the left, smashing a fist-sized hole through the man and sprayed flesh and blood all over his companions. Nikan rolled back behind the barrel and cringed as the heavy synth-tree shook with the force of impacts. The impacts stopped and he could hear the inexpert insertion of new magazines into rifles instead. He rolled to his left and saw one of the men, bent halfway over his rifle with a new magazine likewise halfway inserted. Nikan fired a slug at him and saw the gyrock round smash through the weapon, through the hands and detonate inside his stomach, literally tearing the man apart.
Nikan rolled back and calmly put his pistol on the ground. Out of bullets, out of guns, but sure as hell not out of weapons. Instead of the pistol, he grabbed the fifteen-inch monomolecular edged xithricite vibro-dagger, the one he bought for his graduation money so long ago, and triggered the power cell inside. The slight humming was soon overwhelmed by more bullets smashing into the barrel, and all around it as well. Nikan grinned at the odds, at the situation and at the day and waited.
Again, the inexperienced young man emptied his rifle and had to change magazine. Nikan quickly rose and charged, the vibro-dagger a blur of death in his right hand. The young man looked up in surprise and instantly changed expression to fear as the dagger was extended towards him, sliced through the chest and weapon as effortlessly as if Nikan had cut though water. The young man dropped to his knees and then onto his head. Nikan, bleeding from several small wounds and covered in grey soy-protein was standing over him like the colossus of Crete, murder in his eyes and the slight humming of the dagger the only sound. Several guards came rushing out to the entrance, lasrifles at the ready. They would have been cut down like corn by the assaulters if it hadn't been for Nikan, just another day on the force.
A single crack from a pistol rang out and Nikan felt a stinging pain in his left arm, looked down and saw the inch-wide hole through his left biceps that quickly filled with blood. He looked over to the man that had fired the gun and flinched as the man was speared by four beams of coherent light that vaporised large parts of his torso. Nikan sheathed his dagger and grabbed his UPK badge with his right hand and held it in front of him, towards the guards.

"UPK officer. Nikan Hardrive, serial number ########-###-##."

"Stand down Sir. We have two patrols more coming down here."

Nikan nodded, looked down at his arm again, looked at the scene, decided that the situation was now safely under UPK control and allowed himself to faint.

###

Peytros smiled as yet another of his trojans had been defeated by the automatic defence system. The Viper mainframe had proven to be quite a challenge, even for his talents. He pondered what avenues of attack he could take and came up with something.... different. A manic grin spread itself across his face at the sheer simplicity of it and he started programming the station's mainframe to do what he wanted it to. That took him slightly less than a minute; he activated it and grinned as it started working. He found one of his semi-intelligent worms and encoded it with a small but very useful virus and fed it to the station's mainframe.
The stupid system ate the worm without reservations and allowed it to spread further, the worm finding all access ports and infecting anything that was jacked in. Soon enough, a person in the part of the station that was sealed off for VPR purposes, accessed a station terminal and was force-fed the worm along with a lot of other information onto his ID chit. He then used the ID chit to enter a lock in the VPR part, thus infecting the VPR mainframe. Peytros grinned as the worm was killed with extreme data-prejudice, especially as the virus was then released and started infecting the defensive programs. Peytros had infected the VPR system and now just needed some way to dump the data to something he could take with him.
While he searched for that, the virus allowed him to insert yet another small snippet of data into the VPR system, a programme that would start running when he launched from the station. He just wished he could see the faces of the coppers when all of their screens started displaying various films of Peytros' butt in extreme close-up as he took a dump, instead of the usual information.