Princess

"Course is set, should be around eight hours." It would have been closer to twelve if I'd done the calculations and route myself. Having Ghost handle the heavy thinking for me was a blessing I sorely needed right now. "I want someone awake with me the whole time, so nap in shifts."

"I'll take first," Diaz offered as he finished manhandling Shores into the copilot's chair behind me. "I've still got to get Nye sorted."

He didn't get any complaints. He'd gotten Nye as comfortably settled as could be managed in the cramped cockpit; if either of us needed to stretch our legs, we'd be walking on top of her. He'd even stripped off his burned and pocked shirt so she had a thin pillow. Diaz crammed himself into the corner and set a blood transfusion field kit to start drinking from his arm. I was surprised he had much blood left in him. He'd always looked rough, but I'd never noticed just how bad it really was.

His dark red-brown hair was close-cropped where it hadn't burned away or been replaced by scar tissue. Both of his ears were missing chunks, and his cheeks were considerably more gaunt on his right side. His lightly-tanned skin was so shredded and stitched by pale disfigurement it looked like he was made from a collection of severed limbs and stolen skin. Despite normally standing a few centimeters taller than me, he had a small, lean look overall. The well-toned muscles of his exposed chest and arms were a mix between wiry and athletic, granting him an almost feral air.

I couldn't tell which injuries were from this job and which ones he'd stepped off with. Shallow scrapes and cuts mingled beside their larger stitched or glued cousins. Any unscarred strip of skin that wasn't burned was bruised in all colors, reminding me of dropped fruit and rotting meat. The lower three ribs of his right side were collapsed a few centimeters where they'd never healed properly. His left hand had an impressive crescent carved into its back while his ring and pinkie fingers both ended a joint short.

Diaz noticed my lingering gaze and swapped the freshly-filled blood bag to Nye. Once it was offloading his donated blood, he lifted his head and smiled that sad, broken smile of his that stopped before it reached his dead, brown eyes.

"Like what you see?" He teased.

"It's a lot. Why don't you give this up?" I asked while shaking my head. "Find an easy gig and settle down."

"Retirement… I don't think it will agree with me."

"And this does?"

"Yeah." He scratched his chin while his blood steadily dripped into someone else's veins.

"What flavor is she?"

"Doesn't matter. I'm oh-negative. Universal donor."

"Lucky for her. How long do you think she'll be out of action?"

"Couple months. She'll pull through. Them Lees are tough folk." His patchwork face twitched when he realized what he'd said. It wasn't any worse than me calling him a rock by accident.

The transfusion dripped its last and Diaz set to task cleaning Nye up. She had a youthful, forever twenty-one face and silky black hair common to her oriental roots. Compared to Diaz, her body was practically virgin aside from its recent mutilations running from her strong hips across her slight belly up to her humble yet defined bust. She certainly had a more feminine body than me, but I didn't exactly envy her while I could see her intestines poking through ruptured fat, exposed muscle tissue and third-degree burns.

When Diaz was done with her, he leaned into the copilot's throne behind me and watched over my shoulder as I more-or-less just kept us pointed in the right direction. The Black Cat was flying on a shallow bowed path with a leisurely acceleration and similar braking burn; it was basically on autopilot unless something happened. He got bored and settled back down against the wall beside Nye, keeping an eye open and giving me a shove when I started nodding off. Jhordan took up the watch when the hour came, but she didn't have much to say.

"The sabotage of Doctor Talfryn's station will be coming to fruition shortly." Ghost eventually chimed.

When he'd promised 'irreparable damage to the station,' I was expecting something a little more immediate. Instead, I got an hour of being blue-beaned followed by watching a tiny rock on my display crumple inwards slightly accompanied by a few pinpricks of light.

Disappointed didn't begin to describe my mood after that. If I wasn't sharing the cockpit with half the team, I might have been able to do something about said disappointment on the long, boring flight. Instead, I spent the next hour getting my ass handed to me by Ghost with word puzzles.

"Hey Tony, wake up." Jhordan said over the squad net. It took a few tries. "Switch out."

"Screw that. Wake someone else."

"One of you needs to keep an eye open with me." I nagged.

"Get Diaz to do it." Tony retorted.

I pulled my dry, tired eyes off the cockpit displays and got them settled on Diaz. He was sitting slumped against the wall beside me; Nye snuggled close by his legs under the foil blanket he'd scrounged for her. Seeing them both out of their armor made everything seem so normal and relaxed, like the job was months in the past and only a distant memory.

"Give him another hour," I said. "He needs it."

"Fine," Tony switched to a private channel, "but I'll be singing shanties the entire time."

"They'd better be vulgar." I teased.

"Are there any that aren't?" And with that, Tony launched into a half-hearted song about crabs and gulls. Once he was a little more awake, he started putting his heart into it and the songs came to life on his tongue. It was probably the exhaustion, but I had a shy smile the whole time. The hour came and went in a blink, but Ghost assured me I didn't nod off. "Any requests from the crowd for the grand finale?"

I racked my sleep-muddled brain for any fun songs that weren't techno-pop and came up dry. The only other music I could think of were a few blues ballads and a handful of dirges. None of them were the kind of songs you'd use to stay awake. But there was one of them that stood out though.

"Do you know Together by Bloody Rose?"

"No, but I know the original by Lily Hashford. Trust me, it's better." Tony brokered no debate, then after a second to compose himself, he started the song.

I never thought of Tony's voice as anything but whiny. He wasn't the greatest singer alive, and after an hour of boisterous shanties, his voice was nearly spent, but he surprised me. He couldn't match the pitch in the slightest, but he bled his heart into every single word just the way he was supposed to. He sang like he would be dead tomorrow and this was all he'd leave in the galaxy.

The song was about another band of mercs, years back and long forgotten in every way but one. It was a messy, flawed group of vagabonds scratching out a living and honoring those who'd walked the roads before them while they fought side-by-side. It was beautifully sad, the perfect bittersweet to remember what it was all about. As consciousness slipped from me, I barely heard Tony's closing words.

"That's the last one for the evening. You've been a lovely audience, so if you'll excuse me, I'm going to pass the fuck out."

*  *  *

The Black Cat jerked to the right, jarring me awake as my helmet conked off the panel beside me. Like the promising pilot wannabe I was, I grabbed the stick and rolled it to the left to straighten out in a panic. Nothing happened.

"You were unresponsive to audible stimuli." A polite voice droned in my ears. I gave my faceplate a slap and shake, then tried to decode the displays all around me. The first one that stood out was the time.

"Shit, I fell asleep."

"Correct."

"You let me sleep four hours?"

"Correct, you missed nothing of consequence." Diaz had crawled off the ground, leaning over my shoulder while Ghost got me up to speed.

"What's happening boss?" Diaz asked. I kept scanning my screens until I found the answer.

"Fast mover. Burning hard for the station." I flipped some switches and got the Cat listening for chatter.

"-raft in the area, can anyone confirm what that is?" I recognized the lip-smacking, jowly voice of the fat-faced flight traffic controller from Nothing Wasted.

A chorus prattled back over the comm in the negative.

"I say again, unidentified craft, you must turn on your transponder and submit for inspection before approaching port. Failure to do so will be seen as a threat and you will be fired upon."

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"Are they talking to us?" Diaz asked.

"No, the Cat's running dark. Unless someone's got better eyes than me and looking out a window, we're practically invisible." The downside being we were also essentially blind and silent. No radar, lidar or outgoing signals of any kind. The only info we could get came from open radio transmissions and the Cat's hull cameras.

"That dot, is it a missile?"

"If it was, you'd think the Client would have launched it at us hours ago, not the station." I replied.

"Think the Client would nuke a station just to get even?"

I didn't have an answer.

"Should we warn them?" Diaz asked. "The Shadow won't survive a nuke if it's still docked."

"Ghost, how long until it hits?"

"Less than forty minutes at current velocity." Ghost answered.

"Even with a skeleton crew, they don't have time to get clear. Even if it did, that missile might change targets and go for them— or us. The second I send a signal, we'll be exposed and I can't outfly a damned thing!"

"Unidentified fast mover," fat-face said over the comm. "You will be entering weapons range in five minutes. Reduce speed and activate your transponder."

"We might be right buggered up the arse then. Aren't we?" Diaz said, his thick brogue slipping to the fore.

"We might be. Get the others up to speed. We'll just have to wait and see how this plays out."

Waiting was a terrible thing. Five minutes seemed to drag on for hours as my limbs coursed with adrenaline I couldn't use. At this distance, there was bound to be a delay, I could have asked Ghost for an instant answer but I needed to keep myself occupied. Light speed was around 300 megameters per second, which would be… fifteen seconds. Maybe less. Sometimes space was just too damned big. By the time I saw or heard anything, I'd already be behind the draw.

"Unidentified fast mover, reduce speed now or you will be fired upon." The flight controller forced a calm tone he clearly didn't feel.

The distant pinprick of light vanished from my display. It was impossible to tell if it had cut the engines, changed course, or been destroyed without more complex instruments. Maybe even some combination of the three.

"Good," I heard fat-face let out the breath he'd been holding. "Now, decelerate to port speed and activate your transponder. What the- Open fire! Op-"

The comm when silent.

The distant light of a burning engine returned, amplified a hundred times over, bright enough to see with the naked eye if someone happened to be looking. Even at this distance, I could tell it was picking up a ridiculous amount of speed. The station launched its own light show, a combination of missiles, solid slugs and laser fire visible as bright grainy pixels on my display.

A second later, the comm erupted in a wave of screeching static, screaming voices and an all-too-familiar blaring sound pretending to be white noise. The sound overwhelmed the Cat for a quarter second before pitching upward and ending in a squelching rip-pop.

"Engaging CEW protocols." Ghost said. "Cyberattack repelled."

The too-bright pinprick on my display split into three, spinning and speeding and stopping in a way no human pilot could even pretend to survive. They wove a course through the station's defensive fire like a bullet through flesh. Hundreds of flashes burst across the twelve-pixel blob representing the station. Then there was nothing.

"Shite." Diaz softly cursed over my shoulder.

I realized I was barely on my seat. I sank back into the padded gel throne, feeling like I was ten times heavier than I actually was. I let the pilot's throne consume me, hoping if I sank deep enough, I'd realize this was just a dream— just another nightmare. The galaxy was an absolute shitshow sometimes, but this seemed too unreal.

"Though damaged, the station self-designated Nothing Wasted remains intact." Ghost stated, interrupting my pity party.

I fought my way out of the throne's comforting embrace and focused on the display, leaning in and squinting as if that would help any. It didn't. But Ghost was right; the low-res station was still on my screen, though it was missing a pixel or two.

Two of the pinpricks hammered into the station and disappeared as I watched. I held my breath, waiting for the flash. I ran out of air before it came.

"They weren't nukes," I stated dumbly.

"I lost the third one. I think it got shot down."

"I agree with Diaz's hypothesis, though this is purely speculation." Ghost added.

Another blast of distorted static and something else hammered the shuttle's ears before resolving into the familiar voice of our former Client.

"To all living souls in the Rommel Smece system. My name is unimportant. All you need to know is that I am now in complete control of all critical systems on the scrap-heap of a station you call home. For gutter trash among you who don't understand what I just said, I control your defenses, your power, the very air you are breathing. In a sense, your lives are now in my hands. I am here to offer an ultimatum, cooperate by giving me what I want, or die. Either choking on your own air or… I believe 'sucking vacuum' is the term you people use. Should you find yourselves asking why I am doing this, please direct your attention to the nearest screen."

My face was staring back at me, then Diaz's, then Jhordan's. In time the feed cycled through my entire team along with a basic dossier on each of us. Next, it looped through images of us taken by the Client's bots. Once that was done, it started again from the top.

"They never get my good side." Tony griped.

"That's just unprofessional." Diaz groaned.

"Good thing my mug-shot is outdated." Jhordan added.

"These dangerous individuals are the cause of your current, unfortunate predicament. They are likely hiding somewhere on this very station and moving toward the frigate berthed in dry dock twenty-one with the intent to escape justice. I am hunting these individuals, and once I have what I want, I shall depart this station and return it unto your diligent stewardship. I hereby deputize every able-bodied denizen to assist in thwarting these individuals. Of course, I don't expect you exemplary citizens to risk your lives for the sake of justice alone. I've attached a price to each, dead or alive, with one exception."

My face lingered on display.

"The so-called 'Princess' of these renegades must be delivered alive, otherwise all other bounties are void. Should any ship attempt to break free of the station, I will have no choice but to assume it was attempting to aid these detestable criminals and destroy it. Similarly, you may have noticed a reduction in air circulation. That is to be expected, given that I'll be incrementally disabling the environmental scrubbers every hour until I have what I want. They will be fully disabled within eight hours, all life-support within twelve and shortly afterward, I will open this entire station to the void; that is unless I have concluded my business on this station. You're on the clock people."

The static faded, dead air claiming the open comm.

"How come me and Nye are only worth thirty-thousand each?" Tony complained.

"Better than the eight-thousand for Boomer and Shores. There are bail jumpers who are worth more than that." Jhordan said.

"Easy for you to say, miss fifty grand."

"I thought I'd be worth more." Diaz idly added.

"Okay, mister seventy-five large. Ego much?" Tony quipped.

They bantered on, making the best of the situation, but I didn't process it. I was focused on my price. One fully sentient AI, specifically the one ravaging the station. In other words, my life was a golden ticket to becoming whatever anyone on that station wanted.

"Ghost, how many people are on that station?" I asked.

"At last census, there were 483,541 permanent residents on record. An additional thirty to fifty-thousand are estimated due to the influx of traffic."

"He'd kill half a million people so long as I'm one of them. That's insane."

"As stated previously, Doctor Talfryn is an extremely driven individual."

The comm crackled again, this time with a sexless voice with a choppy accent.

"This is Voidmaster Kim-Song Dodsfall, of the Ice-Breaker Thanatos. Any vessel approaching my ship in the next twenty-four hours will be shot down without hesitation or warning. We shall remain a neutral party in this intrasystem matter under the treatise for all faster-than-light travel and the Ice-Breaker galactic transit accords. However, we will defend ourselves with extreme prejudice."

"Dickless coward!" Jhordan bellowed. "If you're going to fight, you may as well help out!"

"Are you simple?" Tony retorted. "If that ship goes down, no one's leaving this system for decades. Assuming it doesn't turn into a black hole and wipe this place off the star charts."

"Once the current conflict has been resolved," The Voidmaster continued. "We will be upholding our existing schedule and be departing 558 standard hours from now. If the conflict is not resolved prior to our scheduled departure, I will destroy every ship that attempts to follow in our gravity wake. And to the rogue AI that attempted to accost my ship, if you try that again, I'll wipe this entire solar system off the map without a second thought. Dodsfall out."

The proverbially open air seemed to hang on the silence that followed. Unsurprisingly, it was Tony who spoke up when it drug on a little too long.

"Well… that's something you don't hear every day."

"Can they do that?" I asked.

"They can bend the fabric of space to haul turnips from star to star. If they said they could turn piss into gold, I wouldn't bet against it."

"I meant, are they allowed?"

"Who's going to stop them? An AI just took over an entire station, and when it tried to do the same to them, they're acting like it was a sack tap."

"Without witnesses, their truth is the only truth." Diaz added grimly. Another heavy silence threatened to overstay its welcome before I realized everyone was waiting for me to say something.

"We need to get back to the Shadow," I said. "From there we can march the whole damned outfit to wherever this AI and Talfryn are hiding and deal with them."

"It wouldn't take an AI to guess that'd be our first choice," Tony said. "Once we try to dock, they won't need instruments to spot us."

"The Cat won't survive even a quarter-salvo from portside batteries." Diaz added.

"Which is why we won't fly straight for the Shadow." I countered.

"No offense, but the far side of the station is literally the second place I'd think to look for us." Jhordan added.

"The station launched a full spread of missiles trying to shoot down Talfryn. I'm pretty sure he turned them back at the station to soften them up for his own entry."

"We're taking tips from psychos now?" Tony griped.

"If it's stupid and it works-" Jhordan started.

"It's still stupid, and you're lucky." Diaz countered.

"We don't have any better options," I stated bluntly, putting my foot down on the debate. "Once we're inside, we find an access terminal and kick the problem upstairs. I can't imagine the captain will be twiddling his thumbs while our faces are trending on every screen in the system."

"That AI will track us down the second we connect." Tony said.

"I could assist with that." Ghost stated via the squad net "It is unknown if I will be able to fully defeat my opposite, but I should be able to grant you a temporary window."

"No!" Jhordan growled.

"We don't have a choice," I growled right back. "Ghost is our best chance at making it out of this alive. If you wanna beef about it, the airlock's at your feet. Otherwise, fall in line, do what I tell you and you might just live long enough to keep stroking your AI hate on."

On my tertiary display, I saw she wasn't inclined to walk out on us. She didn't start smashing Ghost's core either, which I took to mean she wasn't fully blind to just how shafted we were. I saw Diaz wearing one of his thin-lipped, cold smiles out the corner of my eye. It wasn't much of a plan, but it'd have to do.

"Who knows? Maybe we'll get shot down before we even make it to the station and you'll get what you want." Tony quipped, half joking. A morbid smile graced my lips.

He wasn't wrong.