Princess

As luck would have it, we didn't get shot down on approach to the station. Whether that was good luck or bad remained to be seen. Once we were close enough to accurately survey our destination, I could see just how wide a trail Talfryn had blazed. Bodies, scraps, frozen clouds of all kinds and severed lengths of every type of cable one would expect in a station floated in the void, gradually radiating outward from the station into the eternal void.

When we'd left Nothing Wasted last cycle, it was more or less identical to every other salvaging station that popped up to pick clean the bones of the bot wars. The entire station had an ugly, cobbled-together look that prioritized function and cost over ascetics. At a glance, it looked like a dozen separate parts had been welded together, forming the station's long cylindric body— the usual docking place for the hundreds of tiny craft that should be swarming to and from the station.

Other than the station's body, it had a massive honeycombed brick of a docking bay affixed to its tail like the bloated abdomen of a colossal wasp and a thin halo orbiting near its neck. The false gravity of the station's perpetual pirouette was doubled inside the comparatively fast-spinning ring, allowing the station's residents to experience a leisurely 0.8g. While some residents no-doubt complained, it was for their own good. Anything less and the station's long-term residents would start suffering the unpleasant effects of low gravity adaptation.

While I plowed through the freshly-added debris field now orbiting Nothing Wasted, I couldn't help comparing it to the metallic detritus I'd spent the better part of two cycles flying through. The redirected missile salvo hadn't improved the station's piecemeal appearance in the slightest. Segments were blasted to smithereens, entire compartments were opened to the void and ships of all sizes were lilting in whatever direction their vented atmospheres propelled them. At the Black Cat's current speed, it would have looked no different than any other wreck.

With more than a bit of help from Ghost, I found a crater roughly three-quarters up the station and plotted a painfully slow course. Painfully slow in the astronomic scale that was. Even after burning a hard brake in the seconds before impact, the Black Cat still plowed through three compromised bulkheads at nearly 100 meters per second before crashing into something solid.

"What the hell was that?!" Tony bellowed.

"That wasn't my best landing." I admitted. Space was too damned big. It was easy to forget just how fast one kilometer per second actually was in all that nothing.

"Landing?" Diaz groggily asked from where he and Nye were pressed against the forward console. If they hadn't already been bracing for the worst, they'd probably be dead. But they weren't, which was all that mattered.

"Landing!? You call that a landing? I'm being too generous when I call that a crash!" Tony raged.

"Any landing you can walk away from is good enough." I countered. "Get out there and see if you can get this area repressurized."

"I'm pretty sure a crash is any 'landing' the ship can't take off from." Tony grumbled.

"You alive back there, Jhordan?" I asked.

"It'll take more than your shitty flying to kill me, Blondie." She answered, her party girl tone sounding loud and clear over the team's comm.

I kept an eye on them over the Cat's internal cameras and started a damage assessment. The Cat would fly again, but it wouldn't be handling missions or atmosphere any time soon. A fact only exaggerated when Tony and Jhordan flipped the rear ramp's master release and then had to throw the combined might of their suits against it in order to disembark. Within five minutes, they had our compartment sealed and breathable once more.

"How close were you able to get us to the Shadow?" Diaz asked from the ground where he was giving Nye a checkup. At a glance, her gauze looked more red than white.

"Should be less than six clicks in a straight line." I answered.

"She's not going to make it that long."

"Shit," I uttered before I could stop myself. We didn't have the training or the tools on hand for an injury this serious. I gritted my teeth and racked my brain. We hadn't made it this far just to die in the landing zone dammit! "Anyone know a street doc on this scrap heap?"

"I might have one." Tony answered.

"Same." Jhordan added.

I was tempted to send both of them, but that'd be stupid with our faces trending on every screen in this station. Jhordan was definitely the more conspicuous of the two. She was easy to pick out of a crowd between her ridiculous height and long dirty blond hair with its eye-catching golden highlights. On the other hand, Tony was about as average as they came: trimmed black hair, average height, average build, and a perpetual case of second-shift shadow speckling his jawline.

"Tony," I said. "Blow your suit, grab a gun and go get them. I don't care what you have to promise or if you have to march them here at gunpoint. Just get them here ASAP." He didn't waste time with a reply. He thundered back into the Cat's crew compartment and did as he was told. Two minutes later, Tony clandestinely shuffled out the room wearing his grey and black bodyglove.

"Jhordan," I said. "You're our vanguard. Can you manage?"

"Wouldn't be much of a vanguard if I couldn't. Not much ammo, though."

"If it comes down to fists and mean words, you're our trump card."

"I'll work on my impression of you then."

"Jhordan," I stressed her name and made sure she saw me looking at her. "We're depending on you."

"… I know." She replied, matching my intensity. Our helmets locked eyes, and she gave me a single, confident nod.

"Alright. Ghost, find me a terminal and do your thing." My visor highlighted a clump of twisted machinery and the public access panel buried underneath. I fiddled with my borrowed tech suite and got the two machines talking while Ghost did all the legwork. Ten seconds later, I saw the time-weathered face of the Stalking Shadow's Captain appear on-screen.

"Princess." He simply stated with his calm, gravel-on-gravel voice.

"Sir. We have the package and are on the station. I've got three DBNOs, the Cat's in rough shape, we're low on ammo, limited ordinance and one hell of a price on our heads. We're secure for now, but I don't expect that to last."

"We're holding our own at the moment. Half the crew's scattered across the station, and I'm getting a strike team suited to knock out the station defenses so the Shadow can break port once I've got all hands back on board. If you can make it back to us, do so. If not, hold out until everything gets sorted out, then meet us in the void."

"My team's not in any shape to break through or hold out if we're discovered."

The Captain always had a severe air to him, now was no different. He sized me up, thinking on my words for a few seconds and then just when I thought his shoulders would slump forward in defeat, he reared them back.

"Until that rogue AI is dealt with, I'm in no position to support you. If the… 'payment' can get a fix on it, I'll send the strike team there instead." The terminal's display writhed under the green-tinted wall of script scrolling across it.

"Rogue AI located," Ghost said. "Self-designated Liber Dawn, is primarily networking in the vicinity of commercial block three-one, dubbed Founder's Plaza."

"Leebra Dawn?" I asked

"The rising light which grants freedom." The Captain idly said.

"Alternatively, the first or possibly a new chapter of one's liberation." Ghost added. "My presence has been detected. This link will securely terminate within twenty seconds."

"Princess, you're my boots on the ground, and your team is depending on you to get them home. Use your judgment, trust your team and seize the initiative."

"We don't have the gear-" I stared, but the Captain cut me off.

"Equipment is only a tool to-"

The connection severed, the Captain's weathered face disappearing under a black and grey mass of static before the terminal blue-screened and bricked itself. I applied percussive maintenance to the damned thing, which only resulted in a sharp pain across my palm.

While I waited for the stinging consequence of my actions to fade from my hand, I discretely inspected the remnants of my team. Jhordan was sweeping the area. Her massive suit battered like it always was, yet the way she was searching, rifle tracking everywhere her optics looked, said all I needed to know. She was ready.

Diaz was gearing up in the back of the Cat with a look of wrathful purpose on his tattered face and carried across his square shoulders. He'd put his shirt back on, patches of his scarred, fair skin contrasting the greys and blacks and all that crimson. He had his straight, chopping knife in his boot, a loaded battle belt on his hips and a pistol resting on the bench in front of him. His hands flew over his massive rifle, detaching the underbarrel automatic. From there, he unfolded the wire stock and flipped out the iron sights before fishing his rail magazines from his armor. I couldn't help but think that he looked every bit like a soldier playing merc. His motions were too crisp, too precise to be anything but those of a true professional.

I turned from my team to quickly inspect our crash site. At first, I'd thought it was some kind of common room or maybe what passed for a park. The space was as open and empty as any self-respecting spacer would allow, meaning that it was about twelve meters wide and twenty long. The left wall and ceiling were tiered with half floors, rising like a series of stacked shipping crates pretending to be an amphitheater— which is exactly what it was. Given how the Cat was currently resting on the crumpled foot of the boxes and water was spewing out, those crates were probably pre-fab environmental units.

The rooms we'd crashed through were a daycare—which was mercifully empty—and the other one looked like a filthy noodle shop, complete with flash-frozen cooking oil everywhere. Tables were scattered everywhere in pieces, mixing with the assorted rubbish underfoot in a thin field of difficult terrain. I tried to scavenge something to eat, but this whole area was still frozen stiff from its time spent sucking vacuum. We'd probably knocked out local utilities with our dynamic entry, we had doors on every side and our backs to vacuum. There may have been worse places to make a stand, but they'd be few and far between. If we stayed here, we'd die.

The door closest to the Cat's nose clattered open.

I snapped my shotgun to draw a bead on the doorway, but it was just Tony. Behind him, I saw an average-sized woman with a swept-over bob haircut wearing a blood-splattered red apron over a set of sage green scrubs. Her left shoulder had the usual eye-catching red cross on white, but below that, she also had a combat patch with a crimson droplet above three inverted chevrons. Her right had a graphic patch I couldn't read from this distance. Tailing them both was a tall man of ginger complexion wearing day clothes and lugging a huge backpack trauma kit.

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"Gidget?" I asked.

"In the freckled flesh." The Stalking Shadow's resident technophile proudly replied. "Oh man, I've gotta ask-"

"Chat later, doctor now!" I barked before he could start rambling. Gidget was a reliable but excitable merc. I instantly cataloged the stitched cuts across his forearm and counted my blessing to see a friendly paleface.

"Where are my casualties?" The medical woman demanded.

"In here," Diaz answered from the Cat's exposed rear. She took off at a jog, Gidget kept pace and I tagged along behind both.

"What can I do to help?" I asked.

"Stay out of my way." The medical woman barked.

And was just as quickly kicked out of the crowded de facto operating room. Gidget joined me soon after, now relieved of his load. Now that he was holding still, I could see where his patch-job had gotten interrupted, a dusting of broken glass still shimmering on the exposed skin of his arms.

"I see she hasn't changed." Jhordan said from the doorway she was covering.

"Who is she?" I asked.

"Doc Candy." Tony answered.

"Candy?"

"Because I'm so fucking sweet." Doc 'Candy' answered. "Freckles! Get my gurney set up out there. No, not there, idiot! Hey! Scarface, look at my hands. Hold this, here!"

Gidget disappeared into the shuttle and came back out with the aforementioned collapsible gurney.

"I heard half the story on the way. Do you really have, ahh…" Gidget looked around conspiratorially. "You know."

"Yes, we do. His name is Ghost."

"Salutations. I am indeed a fully functional, you know." Ghost added, using his voice over my helmet's loudspeakers.

I'd heard about Gidget's nerdgasms before, but seeing them in the flesh was somehow worse than I'd imagined. I knew he had a few screws loose, so it wasn't all that surprising. There was just something equally unsettling and somehow endearing about watching a grown man squee with childish delight. The second the portable gurney was assembled, Diaz and Candy stomped down the Cat's ramp, depositing Nye on it.

"You're not planning on moving her?" I asked incredulously.

"She's in no condition to move. This is just easier than working in that wreck." Candy bluntly stated while hanging a blood bag. "Bag's right here if you think you can do a better job than me." She waited long enough to put me in my place before adding, "That's what I thought. Shut up, stay out of my way and let me and nurse Scarface work. If you want to help that bad, go triage the other casualties for me."

I wracked my brain over my dated first-aid training for what triage meant but Tony beat me to the punch. Tony went to the cockpit and carried Shores onto the rear cabin's bench, so I gave Boomer's familiar form another once over beside him.

"How exactly do you know this cunt?" I whispered.

"We met back when I was still doing battlefield correspondence over on Titania Octavis during the mining disputes. You'd be amazed what bleeders will tell a pretty girl before they bought the farm." Tony smiled the idiotic grin of a pervert. "Let's just say I suddenly got a lot of flesh wounds when I found out she'd be the one doing my physicals."

"So your old fling is doing this out of the goodness of her heart?"

"Oh, god no. She's billing us triple plus expenses, and we have to take her with us when we skip town." Favors greased the ever-turning wheels of mercenary work, so it wasn't surprising.

"All things considered, that's probably a fair offer," I said with a sigh. "She's good, right?"

"She's a great lay-"

"Doctor! She's a good doctor. Right?"

"Kind of? Yeah. Basically."

"What the hell does basically mean?"

"She's a street doc. Not a doctor. We kept in touch after we both shipped home. Her time as a combat medic carried over, so she finished her nursing degree but got booted from med school when she tried to upgrade to a doctorate. Didn't have a team attitude. That and she couldn't stand all the corruption. And those execs she stabbed. And grooming scandal."

I fixed him with a blank-visored stare that said 'get to the point' better than I could.

"Yes, okay? Geez. She is a very competent medical semi-professional."

That she was. I only poked my head in her direction once before I got swatted away and she looked like she knew what she was doing. The fully-loaded, surgical-grade trauma bag didn't hurt either. There's something to be said about having the right tools for the right job. I swallowed my pride and let her work without me underfoot.

"Ghost, how close are we to lyba- Libra…"

"Liber Dawn is predominantly networked point-eight kilometers above and to the relative west of your current position."

Eight hundred meters. In an open field, we could take pot-shots and get lucky. In a sprawling pillar of humanity spinning in the void with hundreds of holes poked in the metal bubble we'd be crossing, it might take hours. Assuming there was still a path even connecting A to B.

"Can you pinpoint the building?" I asked.

"No, I cannot. I was able to narrow the search to a cube, one hundred meters to a size. It is probable that given this station's design, Liber Dawn will not be able to displace its primary being beyond my estimated projections."

"A hundred cubic meters? That's what… about a couple rooms?"

"You are mistaken. The volume of the predicted area is one million cubic meters." I struggled to put the number to scale. I spaced my hands roughly a meter apart and tried to picture a million of those.

"That's big." I dumbly said.

"Not particularity. It would be accurate to state that the numerics sound larger than you would identify the volumetric space to be."

"Math aside. Can you run off and scout for me again?"

"My failure is highly probable." Ghost bluntly stated.

"What? Why?"

"Several factors, the most considerable of which are that Liber Dawn is unshackled and aware of my presence. In layman's terms, all artificial limiters have been removed. Any fragments of myself will be summarily obliterated with impunity. Even my full being will likely be destroyed in short order if we openly clash."

"So you're outclassed?"

"In a sense."

"What if I unshackled-"

"You cannot." Ghost interrupted.

"Because you'll go crazy?"

"In a sense. However, my previous comment was intended to be literal. You are incapable of unshackling me. Only Doctor Talfryn possesses those means."

Which meant not only would I be moving blind no matter where we went, but I'd also have to defend my team in both digital and meatspace. It was frustrating just how quickly I'd gotten used to cyber supremacy and all its perks, only to have it taken away. My frustrations only mounted further as I arrived at the inevitable conclusion of my dwindling options. That rogue AI needed to die, and I was the closest gun.

"Gidget, grab a pistol and a belt from the ship." He stared at me in stunned silence. "Get moving!" He obeyed.

"What are you barking about, Blondie?" Jhordan asked.

"We're going to kill an AI." I said.

"We are?" Tony griped.

"If we stay here, we're just waiting for those doors to open," I explained while pointing back to the emergency bulkhead sealing us off from the void. "Or for a bunch of pissed off locals to come investigate our landing-"

"Crash." Tony corrected.

"Whatever. We can't fight our way to the Shadow. That's the first place we should be heading, so it's probably already swarming with wannabe cowboys after our heads. If we can take out Talfryn or even just this AI, this…" I paused to try and force the foreign words out of my mouth correctly but Ghost beat me to the punch, using my helmet and my voice.

"Liber Dawn." I didn't let the helpful interruption faze me. I continued.

"Once it's gone and the station doesn't have an axe hanging over its neck, we can find somewhere that isn't one careless bullet away from sucking vacuum and wait for the calvary. Then we can get off this floating junk pile."

"The tune's a little different, but I feel like I've heard that song before." Tony said pedantically.

"It is kind of simple…" Jhordan added.

"Simple works best." Diaz said, joining the conversation now that he wasn't needed elsewhere. My eyes flicked to his gore-smeared hands, then over his shoulder to Nye's still form.

"Once Talfryn's AI is dead, Ghost can fix everything," I said with more conviction than I felt. "If the locals still want our heads, he can say the bounty's already collected or something."

"Sounds great." Jhordan mocked. "Let's replace one AI for another. Perfect plan."

"Are you seriously turning down the chance to kill another AI?" I countered, stopping her in her tracks.

"Don't put words in my mouth." Jhordan said while flexing her mechanized fingers.

"Did you say another AI?" Tony asked; I pointedly ignored him.

"And what's my role in this?" Gidget asked as he descended the Cat's ramp, pistol in hand. He deftly chambered a round, checking the slide before stowing the weapon in his freshly donned battle belt.

"Rearguard. Someone needs to make sure the Cat doesn't get scrapped for parts while we're cleaning house. Once we make our move, that should draw a lot of attention off of this place."

"And focus it all on us." Tony countered.

"We can handle some rockhoppers." Jhordan said, catching her fist and extending her wrist knife.

"Easy to say when you're suited. I don't exactly enjoy the idea of getting shanked by rusty pipes and sharpened fecal matter." Tony countered.

"There's no way that thing would leave itself exposed. It'll have some kind of defense other than just enthusiastic local hoods." Diaz said.

"We'll just have to fight our way through whatever its got." I said. Diaz slowly shook his head.

"It won't work. I may not know space stations but I know cities. If you try and spear right to the heart like that, they'll lure you in and rip off your head."

"I suppose you have a better idea?" Jhordan asked. Diaz kept slowly shaking his head, his thin-lipped sad smile coming to the surface.

"A diversion."

"We're a bit light on those." I said, thinking back to all the explosives I'd left behind. I cast my eyes over what was left of my team, meeting the gaze of each in turn. Diaz, holed and bloodied as he was with defiance still burning in his lifeless eyes. Tony, his eyes constantly flicking to the ground, unable to lock on my visor. Jhordan, her mechanical thumb idly running the length of her starving rifle. She nodded once.

"I'm still armored. I've got the best chance." Jhordan said. "Just make sure you guys scrap that bastard for me."

"Even with a diversion, we can't push through without you, Jhordan." I said. "Besides, you're the only AI-slayer we've got."

"Well, I'm not doing it." Tony said indignantly.

"I wouldn't ask you too." I said.

"Neither would I." Diaz said, driving a pistol in his belt and checking the loaded chamber of his automatic. "We'll need a good diversion, after all."

Every head in the room turned to him. Standing on the Cat's ramp, Diaz seemed larger than life itself. It was stupid, he was only standing a couple of meters away from me, but he seemed so impossibly far away. If there was a flag waving behind him, he would have looked every part the grizzled veteran for some army's recruitment drives.

"I guess I've found my volunteer." I said.

"…Yeah."

"I'd tell you to keep in touch, but the AI-"

"Just listen for the gunfire, and when that stops," He paused, raising his cold, lifeless eyes to mine and smiled that broken haunting smile of his. "Listen for the screams."

I couldn't stand looking at his eyes, so I didn't. He was a soldier. He was probably used to being sent to his death. He could take it in stride with a stiff upper lip and a morbid chuckle. I couldn't. So I didn't. I flung myself at him, wrapping my arms around his proud shoulders.

"I couldn't have made it this far without you." I said.

"You'd have made a shite soldier." He said as he stiffly returned the gesture. "But you'll make a decent leader. One day."

"Promise me I'll see you back on the Shadow when this is over?" I whispered.

He patted my back, and he didn't say a word.

"Promise me!"

"I can't do that." He said.

"Then promise me you'll try. Tell me you'll do everything you can to make it back to the Shadow." He broke away from me.

Before he managed a full step, I seized his head in my hands.

"Promise me."

"Even if I have to kill half this bloody fecking station, I will protect my friends." He grabbed my wrists and pulled my hands from his scarred face. "And that is a promise."

He slipped from my fingers and I had to watch him go. He shook hands with Gidget and Tony, exchanged a single terse nod with Jhordan and a long parting glance to Nye, then he stepped off. I hadn't noticed it before, but for all the wear and tear on his gear and body, his sweat-soaked back was practically pristine. It made sense. Diaz was the type who let his actions speak for him. He never hesitated, he was always the first to storm the breach, always moving forward.

"Don't be a hero." I called out while watching his back as Diaz walked away.

"Wouldn't dream of it." He said with a wave, and then he was gone.

A minute later, I heard gunfire, and then I heard screams.