I fumbled with the massive jumble of wires trying in vain to find the one that was color coded correctly and not attached to anything other than the transponder unit and the coupling system that went into the ship.

"I can't find it," I said over my helmet's comm, clear exasperation sinking into my voice.

"It should be the green and white wire that runs directly between the transponder unit and the coupling for the main ship," said X-Talia.

I rolled my eyes so hard it hurt. "I know what it should be. I can't find it."

"Activate your suit's camera so I can take a look," she requested.

Now, I was fumbling with settings inside the suit's HUD because I didn't know this thing had a camera. It took a while, but I eventually found it, pointed my chest area at the jumble of wires, and waited for the digital person to visually examine the mess herself.

"Oh. It would appear that the modification has already been made."

I sucked in a deep breath of recycled air before saying, "You mean to tell me that we stopped in the middle of nowhere between two stars, where if anything happens, we're screwed and we all die, to make a modification which requires me to EVA up the ship barely tethered to where I could just float away so I could disassemble this pain in the ass housing, play with all these wires, and nobody thought to check if the previous crew who were a bunch of sketchy assholes might have made a sketchy asshole modification to the ship’s transponder?"

"Yeah, that's about right," said X-Talia, far too cheerfully.

"Hindsight's 20-20," Sam added unhelpfully.

I took another deep breath to calm my nerves. "Okay, I'm gonna put the housing back on and come back in. While the view is breathtaking out here. So is the environment."

X-Talia chuckled over the comm. I didn't hear anything from Sam. Of course the machine intelligence would get my stupid joke. The transponder housing had been a pain in the ass to get open. Not only did it have a large number of fasteners holding it, some of them were freaking cold welded in the place. I had to cut most of them. Once the damn thing had been put back the way it was supposed to be. I grabbed a hold of my tether and slowly walked along the skin of the Res-a-tesseract. Thank the stars for magnetic boots. This whole thing was a load of asteroid shit and it certainly brought up another question.

The fresh ship air felt good against my sweaty, nasty feeling skin. EVA sucked. Being in a suit sucked. I wasn't even trained for this shit. I made my way onto the bridge and flopped back down to the pilot's chair and finally asked the question that had plagued me on my way back in.

"So if the previous crew already made the damn modification, what are they pretending the ship is?"

X-Talia had the good grace to look sheepish. "Ah, they're pretending the ship is the Res-a-tesseract."

"I thought that was the ship," Sam asked from the navigation console seat.

"No, the transponder has been off the entire time. They've been pretending to be the Res-a-tesseract which on file is supposedly a shuttle owned by Rick James."

"That would have been the previous captain."

"Rick James?" I asked. "That sounds like a damn porn name."

Sam laughed.

I turned my head to her and said, "I wouldn't laugh. You might wanna check the net. Make sure there's no Rick James, sexy succubus shower specials."

Sam's mirth immediately died. Her attitude darkening. Shit. That was not the right thing to say.

"Sorry, I didn't mean that to sound like that," I tried to put as much sincerity in my voice as possible.

"No, I get it. You're right. I probably should check the damn net and make sure that I'm not a fucking porn star."

Trying to change the subject, I returned my attention back to X-Talia. "So what is the actual ship's name?"

"Nike," X-Talia said.

I could feel my eyebrows raising. "They named a light cargo ship after a goddess of victory?"

X-Talia shrugged.

"So you can spoof this ship as the Flying Brick, right?"

"Yes, and it would likely hold up to scrutiny a little bit better as this is clearly not a shuttle."

"Clearly," I looked over to Sam who was sitting back in her chair, arms crossed and looking perturbed. I really should have kept my mouth shut.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

"Ok. Well, please plot us a course to our actual destination.”

“Done."

"How much longer before we can open a Rift?"

A timer popped above X-Talia's head and she gave one of those "ta da" gestures. "Four minutes. That's convenient," I said.

"Ok. So we got the ship name spoofed for when we dock, but it's gonna ask for somebody to pay. Who's paying?"

"Why don't we just use the previous pilot's account?" X-Talia suggested.

"Well, we can't do that because I have to thumb…” No, no, I was wrong. Never once had I had to thumb for anything when docking. The data was already loaded into the ship’s computers, it was just a matter of accepting which account it was coming out of. “Never mind. How much is in the account?" Maybe we had a lot of money that we could use. Rick James was not exactly going to be using it while he was currently occupying space in the freezer.

"X-Talia, delay opening the Rift. Sam, we need to ditch the bodies."

"2617 credits."

Well, that wasn’t much. “So, can we do that? We spoof this ship as the Flying Brick and we spoof payment using the previous captain. Nobody knows he's dead." I looked around, but neither X-Talia nor Sam could give me anything other than a shrug. “Well, I guess that's the plan."

To say everything was nerve-wracking would be an understatement. I sent notification to the dock that I had a shipment inbound and that we were looking to get out quite soon due to a high-priority cargo. I also managed to find a shipment heading way the hell out and scheduled to have it stocked into the cargo hold very shortly after we docked, along with the replenishment order. Rick James docked the ship and paid for tankage. He also received payment for delivery and paid the insurance on the outgoing cargo. The whole jumble was a bit chaotic. Things got a little scheduled too close to each other and there was a bit of a traffic jam in the docking arm which slowed things down, but in the end, we ended up in and out of the port in two and a half hours. All in all it went pretty well. Sam and I even got take out and we sat on the bridge as we slowly made our way out to the safety line. All three of us making chewing sounds despite one of us not actually needing to eat. X-Talia’s insistence that she be there for meal times was a bit odd, but then again, she hadn't necessarily been programmed to be a ship's A.I. She apparently had been programmed to be very humanlike, and just happened to be capable of playing the part of a ship's A.I. So, whatever. It didn't take long and we were off into the Rift. This was gonna be a long trip. So long, we decided that we were gonna have to drop out in a different system. Let the capacitors charge and then head into the Rift again. There was just a certain amount of Rift travel a person could take before it started feeling way too awkward. We'd be making the trip in three separate jumps, but we had enough spares and food and freezer space now that we should be totally okay. Apart from some horrible mechanical failure, nothing should go wrong.

***

Seamus O'Connor's tablet beeped. He wiped his hands and mouth off with a napkin and pushed his plate aside before pulling out the tablet and checking the message. It was from the Lilith. With that noted, he checked to make sure nobody was looking in his direction before actually opening said message. The Lilith had been monitoring incoming ships when a ship registered as the Flying Brick entered the system. The AI cross-referenced any other information with the Flying Brick and noted that an insurance claim had been filed and was processing. Due to the distance of the systems involved and the timing on some of the paperwork versus when the Flying Brick had entered this system, the ship's AI flagged it and sent it to him. A quick perusal of the insurance claim and Seamus almost ignored the possible lead, but something didn't sit quite right. There was nothing in the insurance claim to state that there had been anything actually wrong with the ship, only that it was adrift between stars. Verifying there was still no one else around him, he pulled up some more information on the registration ID. The Flying Brick was a light freighter registered to a Grant Takata. That name popped up a bounty which now had Seamus' interest peaked. The model of the Flying Brick came in two variants, the drone-flown one and then the type that had a small habitable area, neither of the models had Rift drives and Seamus had to consider that for a moment.

“Well, now Grant, how exactly did ya get stuck out in the middle of nowhere and return to a system to file the insurance claim? Did ya pirate the pirates or something?”

It was enough of a curiosity. Seamus decided to pay for his meal right there and head up to his room where he had more privacy. With a little bit more searching, Seamus noticed that the last known location of the person of interest known as Grant Takata was on a ship named the Res-a-tesseract. That ship was registered as a shuttle. The Lilith's optical cameras confirmed that the ship currently pretending to be the Flying Brick was neither a light freighter nor a shuttle. The price on Grant's head really wasn't that high and he was wanted alive. Not something Seamus would consider to go through multiple systems trying to catch or spend a lot of time, money, and effort tracking down, but the guy currently flying in and heading to one of the ports in the system was an opportunity he couldn't refuse to check out. He closed his hotel account, made sure the stocks on the Lilith were up to date and headed out. Worst-case scenario, this would be for nothing and he'd at least have something to pique his interest for a few hours.

Unfortunately, Seamus wasn't on the correct station and Mister Takata seemed to be in quite the hurry. The Flying Brick left the station before the Lilith had to start slowing down. Seamus mined enough data from the station to have a pretty decent idea where Mr. Takata was going. Someone had recently picked up a cargo with a destination 32 light years away and towards a different sector of space. He had to consider if he wanted to pursue this. 15K was a decent chunk of change, but this little chase might not actually be worth it. Seamus didn't have proof that the guy on the ship was Grant Takata or that the cargo being taken was actually on the Flying Brick. He could likely get that information, but that would take time on station dealing with station's bureaucracy. He would lose the lead.

"Lilith, plot the route to Octus and show me what systems lay along the route at the maximum average Rift jump that people are comfortable with," Seamus watched as the computer calculated, pulling up two systems.

"Show me the details on both of these systems.” One system did industrial processing. The other was very vibrant. Large amounts of people, a habitable planet with a lot of tourism and generally just seemed like the kind of place somebody trying to sneak off to a different sector of space wouldn't go through. Seamus's eyes went back towards the system specializing in industrial tech.

"All right, Mister Takata, why don't ya tell Seamus what yer all about?" Seamus said to himself as he pulled up Grant's files. It didn't have much to say. The kid was born in space, lived in space, had virtually no record other than the school he went to for his pilot certification, his purchase of the Flying Brick, and his current bounties based on piracy and a new one that didn't really add all that much. All in all it looked like the guy was a pretty straight shooter type person. Kind of a loner and someone who hadn't been on the wrong side of the legal system long enough to know how to hide.

"Lilith, set a course for the first system on yer calculated path. Bring us five light seconds north of the ecliptic.”

“Course plotted," replied the ship's AI.

"Right. Then let us just go take a gander and see if the hunch pays off. It's not like we don't know where he's going."