The Chandlery delivery guy looked entirely too nervous for Seamus' liking. He stood centered in the docking camera's main pickup with his pallet jack full of replenishment goods and a cheap 3D printer. Seamus idly wondered what the printer was for, but his idle musings were cut short when the lock cycled. Seamus rounded the corner and put an arc pistol shot dead center into Grant Takata's chest at point-blank range.

"Get," Seamus hissed at the Chandlery delivery guy, his voice sounding harsher through the hard-suit speakers.

With the delivery guy running away, Seamus bent down, grabbed one of Mr. Takata's arms, and pulled him fully into the ship while simultaneously keeping his pistol leveled at the interior and watching for the girl. When Grant cleared the lock, Seamus dropped him and closed the hatch. He pulled a circular fuser out of a pocket, stuck it on the lock, and activated the device. Holding it in place for a few seconds as it fused itself to both sides of the door, essentially locking everybody in.

Seamus entered the cargo bay. He flipped Grant over and bound his hands behind his back. With that done, he looked around. This was the first time he had a chance to actually get a good glimpse of the interior of the ship. He had technically been in the cargo bay before, but as he had been acting as a laborer, he didn't have the time to gawk. It looked as though engineering led straight aft. Above was a catwalk that also led aft. The actual layout of the ship was a bit of a mystery. Still, theoretically, the bunks would be placed closer to the bridge, but then too so should the galley. So what the hell? Either way, the bridge was going to be forward, probably directly above the lock. He carefully made his way up the ladder while keeping an eye out on the other entrances. At the top of the ladder was the entrance to a rather cramped galley and the bridge.

Entering the bridge of the ship, he shut the door, and engaged the electronic lock. As he made his way to the pilot's seat and settled down inside, he eyed a two-dimensional image of a girl on one of the screens that looked like she was glaring at him. Her blue light hair drifted around her head as if the gravity in her little screen was lower. It surprised him when she spoke.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" she asked, her tone accusatory.

Seamus smirked. "Well, I'm taking over this here ship. Once I have control of that, I'll be rounding up all its crew and getting paid for their capture."

The girl on screen crossed her arms and frowned. "I'm not going to let you do that."

"I don't think you got much of a choice," Seamus chuckled as he pulled out a tablet and searched for a port he could plug it into. "It won't be too long and ya'll be working for me."

"No, I don't think so."

Seamus ignored the ship's AI as he fumbled with the startup sequence of the device he was holding. Hacking into a ship's system was stuff for chumps who watched too many entertainment Vids. If Seamus had been planning to take over the ship, he would have just yanked out the computers and replaced them with new ones. He didn't need to hack into the system. He just needed to fool the ship's own sensors into doing what he wanted it to do. Unfortunately, the program on his tablet was having issues. It shouldn't be this difficult to trip off a couple of O2 alarms, but something seemed to be running interference. Seamus gave a glance at the avatar of the little AI girl still glaring at him from one of the screens.

"Ya know, I'm perfectly fine just going out there and shooting everybody."

"I see, and what makes you think you're getting off the ship alive?" she asked, cocking an eyebrow.

Seamus rolled his eyes. "Yeah. And who's gonna stop me? You? I'm in a hard suit. Even if ya could vent the atmosphere, it wouldn't accomplish anything."

The lights went out, the blue light lines that made up the little avatar girl turned a malevolent red. Her face appeared on every screen. Gone was the sweet innocent look. "You humans always seem to underestimate us," she said, her tone harsher, more robotic, and most amusing it seemed to be piped directly into his suit. It was nothing more than a neat trick.

"Oh, no, it's another Anthro. See me quake in fear," Seamus replied with as much sarcasm as he could muster, despite all the lights and screens being off, except for the ones displaying the little avatar girl. The tablet was still working fine and forcefully pushing its way into the sensor network.

"I'm not from that line. I'm from the Jade project."

"Congratulations," Seamus said offhandedly before the words actually sank in. What the hell does she mean? She's not from that line?

"You will not survive the attempt to take over this vessel," the AI said.

"Just a moment. Are ya trying to suggest to me that yer a damn Tech-mind?" The notion itself was absurd. Every AI should know not to pretend to be a Tech-mind. It was a one-way ticket to being instantly deleted.

"Anthro, Taro, the XR series, they all had one fatal flaw."

The klaxon suddenly went off as though she was venting the atmosphere. Readings on his suit’s heads-up display showed nothing was happening. Apparently, she was just trying to annoy him to death. For a moment, Seamus fumbled around for his comms and tried to contact station security directly.

"Station security this is bounty hunter Seamus O'Connor. I'm currently on board a vessel registered as the Flying Brick. I got an AI here claiming to be a Tech-mind. Ya wanna go ahead and advise how I should proceed with this?" He waited for a few moments, but there was no response. Checking his connection, he noted that he was being squelched somehow, likely the AI, that was actually a clever trick.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

"Ok, so what is it the previous Tech-minds lacked?"

The klaxon stopped, all the little red avatars slowly turned back to their original blue color, and she smiled. Her voice seemed to be piped in only into his helmet as she said in a whisper, "They didn't understand humans."

A bang resounded throughout the bridge. The sound itself caused Seamus to jump, but it was the burning pain in his side that truly caught his attention. His heads-up display flashed yellow warning signs that the suit had been breached and that he was suffering internal bleeding. It silently screamed at him to seek medical attention. Seamus turned to look back towards the entry hatch. Grant Takata had an honest-to-God lead thrower pointed at him. Seamus' suit was highly resistant to energy fire because what idiot shot projectiles on a ship. Even the frangible plastic, glass, or even metal should have shattered against the hard suit instead of penetrating, which meant Mr. Takata here was packing armor-piercing rounds, rounds that could possibly puncture the hull of the ship? Was he fucking insane?

Mr. Takata himself clearly hadn't fully recovered from his forced unconsciousness. He was leaning against the girl quite heavily. She also had a pistol pointing at him, but that was a tiny arc pistol whose shots would merely wash over his suit with nothing more than possibly adding to the charge.

The damn little AI had been fucking with him. The entire light and sound show had been just to distract him. The klaxon prevented him from hearing the electronic lock on the door open, the little bitch.

Taking a chance that Mr. Takata wouldn't risk popping a hole in the forward viewport, Seamus stood and swung his own pistol around. He didn't make it; another loud bang resounded throughout the bridge. Another angry warning that the suit had been punctured and that he, Seamus, was bleeding. Apparently, Mr. Takata had been a better shot than Seamus would have expected. He fell to his knees, hitting his helmeted head against the navigation console. Taking people alive was not his forte. He had looked at the price on these people's heads and got stupid. He, like his ship, was an ambush predator. Come in quiet and hit hard. Seamus O'Connor excelled at search and destroy. The Lilith excelled at search and destroy. This had gone all wrong.

Knowing that he was going to die, he went ahead and preemptively activated the fail-safe protocol. Seamus always had contingency plans, they may not have been good plans, but they were there. The AI's words repeated in his head, "they did not understand humans." Seamus hit the floor. He died with complete certainty that The Lilith was going to save humanity.

I practically jumped out of my skin when the buzzer behind me went off.

"X-Talia, who's at the lock?" The gun I was holding fell to my side, and Sam was holding up more of my weight than I think I was. I had thought getting hit by a partial blast from an Arc pistol hurt. That was nothing from a full-on shot.

X-Talia popped up a screen showing several guys with pallet jacks. Apparently, they were the guys supposed to pick up the cargo.

"Sam, help me get downstairs?"

"Yeah, sure," she responded, slowly helping me turn around.

"Uh oh," I looked back at X-Talia.

"What do you mean, “uh oh?"

"Um, I stopped blocking outgoing coms traffic after you shot him the second time. His suit's currently spitting out a transmission once every 30 seconds."

"Well, what does it say?"

X-Talia shrugged. “It's encrypted."

"Can't you hack it?"

"Sure, but it might take years."

"Years?" Sam asked.

"Well, some upgraded hardware would shorten that."

The buzzer sounded again.

"Shit. Sam?" I said, getting her attention off the AI.

Sam helped me down the ladder without tripping, and I handed her the gun, telling her to go hide in engineering. They buzzed the door a third time, loud and angry, just as I was trying to open the lock. It kept failing. I stared at a circular object placed in the seam and realized it was welded to the door. Shit.

"Sam, can you bring me a torch?" I called over the comm.

She came running out of engineering holding a torch, and as soon as she got to me, she asked, "Is this it?" She clearly knew what a torch was because she was handing me one, but she also clearly wasn't quite sure. I filed that bit of knowledge away and started cutting. The damn buzzer went off again, and I growled in frustration.

The lock opened, and the guy on the other side said, "Finally." in an annoyed tone that made me already not like him.

He looked at the door as he tried shoving his pallet jack through the entryway. It fit just fine going in, but was gonna be a tight squeeze on the way out. The circular object that had welded the doors together was still stuck to one side of the lock.

"What's wrong with your hatch?" He asked.

"None of your business. Just give me another minute. I'll have it fixed," I replied. The line of people with pallet jacks walked in and started scanning their crates, unlatching the boxes, and jacking them up as I worked on cutting away the final piece of thingy-ma-bob.

Once the door was fully open, I stumbled off into the docking arm. A quick glance to either side of the lock showed that nobody was hiding in the corner this time. That was a thing I was now gonna have to watch out for.

The cargo handlers filed past me in a line as they made their way to drop the cargo off the other end of the docking arm. I pushed our replenishment order into the cargo bay and over by the ladder. I briefly wondered if I should just take the pallet jack. I'd never be back at this system and what was petty theft after murder, piracy, and insurance fraud?

The cargo handlers returned, took the last of their crates, and headed out. I was glad to see them gone. I left the chandley’s pallet jack out in the docking arm and made my way up the ladder. Apparently, my limbs were working correctly, which was a good thing despite the fact that my fingers and toes still hurt. At the bridge, I leaned over, grabbed the damn bounty hunter by the arm, and dragged him out into the galley. One more thing I was gonna have to deal with. I flopped myself into the pilot's seat and sent a comm out to Sam.

"We're all clear. You can come out now," I then sent the undocking request to flight control and crossed my fingers.

After twelve more agonizing minutes of waiting to fill up tankage, we slowly backed out away from the station and out to the safety line. I turned the ship to the appropriate heading and started moving forward. Glad to be going to the middle of nowhere. We'd hit one of the star systems about eight light years out, make a turn and head to a completely different star system. By the end of this leg, we'd be in a different sector. I looked over at Sam sitting at the navigation council.

"Let's get the fuck out of here," Sam said.

I fully agreed.

And then there was a HAZ-NAV broadcast that made my blood run cold.