Author's Notes: I've passed the 70K word mark and have realized that the story hasn't really progressed the way I wanted. Keeping it as a game might have been the better option. The ship building isn't following the Starfinder ruleset in any way shape or form. However I don't hate the story so it won't suddenly die like 'Shademire Company' did. I'm gearing up for the end. A little disappointed that Zoia is only showing up now. The original character list was Grant, Sam, and Zoia.

"Mayday, mayday, this is Zoia of the Black Adder. My ship has been disabled by fire from pirates. I have two hours of oxygen and don't think I'm going to be getting life support up and running before I'm out. Is anybody out there listening? Please respond. Be warned, the other pirate is probably disabled, but might get their ship online faster. Mayday, mayday, mayday, is anybody out there?"

"All right, ladies and gentlemen, same as usual. Load up the hauler. No one gets hurt."

The voice transmission was picked up by a drone. One of the small ones that was cobbled together with leftover pieces of the two mining drones. The message was then relayed to the Retribution.

"Yeah. Just a heads up. There's a ship somewhere north of us who thinks they're using us as bait for you."

"They ratted us out just like that?" Sam asked with a tone more along the lines of disappointment than surprise.

I shrugged. "They can't be too ruthless. I assume they need to build up trust with their targets. 'You give us the goods, we don't hurt you.' That kind of whole shtick. Makes sense that the miners trust them more than us."

I spent more time trying to figure out how our position had gotten defined as North. It took too damn long to realize it was based on Azore's spin. The cardinal directions then plastered themselves in my mind: north, south, east, west, toward Azore and away from Azore.

There was some not very useful chatter as the miners and pirates discussed our probable location and whether or not there was more than one of us. Five ships came into view, two of them, a large freight hauler of some sort and a smaller fighter, parked themselves next to the mining barges. The other three, two fighters and a gunboat of an extremely similar design to the Retribution, though considerably more whole, angled their way towards us.

I took control of the Retribution and moved us a bit east and away from Azore. There was a specific asteroid I wanted these guys to pass, and the closer I could get them to it, the better this ambush was gonna work.

"Unidentified vessel, what do you think you're doing?"

I looked up towards the console and over at Sam. "What are we doing? It's not privateering. That's just piracy for other nations. Pirate hunting? Pirating the pirates?"

Sam shrugged. "I think technically it would be pirate hunting."

"Hunting pirates. What are you guys doing?" I said over the comm, wondering what his expression to my answer might be. "X-Talia, you can activate the, uh, transponder?"

It came out as more of a question because we weren't actually using a transponder. We weren't running an actual ship ID. We were just gonna squirt out a name connected to a number that was just a bunch of zeros. I wanted all eyes on the damaged, but shielded ship.

"I think you're in the wrong system for that," came the response nearly a minute later. Must have been due to hesitation because he wasn't that far away. He was right, of course. We had literally no support. With the pirates and the mercenary security working together, Rixa indeed was the worst place to be a pirate hunter. It would be less bad if I had a working Rift Drive, but we didn't. We were stuck here. Couldn't go to any stations, and wouldn't be left alone to mine. However, I was done with running. There was literally no place left to run. We were at the edge of human-controlled space, and we were as far as we could go without some type of very self-sufficient fleet.

Random thought: Could we build a self-sufficient fleet?

I thrust the ship into a forward dive, flying straight at the pirates. It must have been an odd sight. The whole front of the ship was unshielded and partially missing. There was a freight container welded to the ventral section. One side of the ship was missing most of its shields. The Retribution only had one working point defense cannon. We were falling at a comfortable four-G acceleration. We looked wounded. We were wounded. The pirates had to be too busy laughing to know what hit them.

Two missiles launched from their gunboat. Two missiles launched from the Retribution. Two more missiles activated just as the ships passed one of the asteroids. One of them targeted the nearest fighter. The other targeted the gunship itself. Without the advantage of seeing them coming from a distance, both ships were unable to turn their point defense cannons on the incoming death tubes. One missile hit the fighter and took it out completely. The other missile smashed into the gunboat's shields, causing a wave of light to play over the ship. It didn't cause the shields to go down, but the ship rolled to put its suddenly weakened side in the other direction. The other fighter moved in front of the gunboat to picket the incoming missiles from the Retribution.

I laughed. Two more missiles came out from the next asteroid. They were more ready for this. The gunboat managed to take out one of them before the other smashed into the other fighter. The fighter wasn't completely out of commission, but the pilot had some serious problems. Plus, there were still the two missiles from the Retribution coming straight at him. That fighter went up in a blaze of vapor and parts. The gunboat started firing its point defense cannon at this last incoming missile, only to find a drone firing Ripper cannon shots into its turret. The Retribution's second missile never made it to the gunboat, but by then, the drone was on the gunboat's turret, hovering only about five or six meters away from the vessel as it poured rounds into the ship's weak point. The gunboat tried to turn, but the little drone with oversized power core and gravity emitters merely rotated along with it, continuing to pour rounds into the ever growing hole. I took my concentration off long enough to vaporize the two incoming missiles with my own point defense cannon. An easy job when nothing else was shooting at you. And then the gunboat stopped moving.

"Ok, guys," I said, directing the message towards the hauler and its single fighter escort. "Let the miners take their cargo back. Vent your atmosphere on the hauler, turn off the gravity, and power down all ship systems. Whoever is on the hauler can get in that little fighter and you can leave. Or you could try to run. I've got plenty of missiles left and we didn't take any damage." I sat back in my chair and waited.

"Can we take the soft suit off now?" Sam asked.

"X-Talia, why do you think that gunboat stopped moving?"

"Extrapolating from the drone's firing angle, I guess the systems cabinet was separated from the rest of the ship, either directly damaged or possibly the wiring."

"So they could still technically get some things fixed, start flying around, and firing at us?"

"Yes."

"The fighter is docking with the hauler," Sam noted, bringing my eyes to another screen.

Were they actually listening to me? "I feel like this went too well. What's the bigger prize?"

"The gunboat," Sam said. "More missiles, shield points, and all that stuff."

"I agree with Sam," X-Talia said.

"Hmmm," I stared at the drifting gunboat on the screen. Sam was right. It was the bigger prize. The shield generator alone was worth it, let alone two power cores, but how to collect? "X-Talia, can you bring our fighter drone up to the front of that thing? See if we can get a good look inside the bridge viewport."

"One moment."

It didn't take long. The drone had been following at zero relative speed right alongside the gunboat. It merely moved up forward and turned itself so its main camera could look directly into the bridge. The people inside still had power. Two guys were frantically working on the systems cabinet. They had gravity, but were probably in vacuum at the moment.

"Well, I guess let's try comm-ing them.”

"Attention, pirate gunboat. If you will look outside your forward viewport, you will see down the barrel of one of my automated guns." I waited to see if anybody in the bridge would turn and try to look out the viewport. They did. Supposedly, they had lost control of the mechanisms in the aft end of the ship. Theoretically, the engineer could manually fly the thing. They still had almost all their shields, so they were like a big floating turtle, a hard shell with a few weak points. All the valuable innards would get damaged if we decided to do the same thing we had done to the Retribution, which I was sorely tempted to do.

"Hello. I know you can hear me. You've got a choice. You either surrender and we'll see if we can get one of the miners to take you back to a station with them, or I start opening your tin can. What's it gonna be?" Both men on the bridge stopped what they were doing and stared back out the viewport. I imagined them arguing whether or not I could make good on my threat. I could. We could stick that drone back in the little hole where the turret had been and rip its way through into the bridge, turning the gunboat into something that resembled the Retribution a little more closely.

"It looks like they might have listened with the hauler," said X-Talia.

"Can we send our little relay drone down there to see if it worked?" Sam suggested.

"Sure."

"You have two minutes before I start firing again," I said to the guys trying to get their ship fixed enough to keep in the fight. The turrets were certainly a weak point. In open space, it likely didn't matter quite as much, but in the asteroid field that was the ring around the gas giant, the ability to lay ambushes certainly changed the dynamics. The ability to cut the cord from the systems cabinet to the actual systems they reached out to was another weak point. The guys on the screen started working more frantically. One guy disappeared through the hatch, leaving only one on the bridge. They weren't surrendering; they were gonna go down fighting.

"X-Talia, just start chewing away at the front."

She gave me a nod, and then the drone left the front viewport, stuck its gun barrel into the hole in the shields, and started firing towards the fore. It was considerably more precise than I had been when we took the ship we were currently on, and it wasn't long before the drone had opened up the front and could point the barrel of its gun back down the viewport and pick off the squishy targets inside.

"FUCK!" I yelled as the gunboat launched two missiles. Both screamed forward, alternating their trajectory just slightly so that they collided with the drone in front of the ship. That move may have been suicidal with the shields up, but without shields, there was no coming back from it. Twin explosions obliterated the cobbled-together parts of the Res-a-tesseract as well as the bridge of the gunboat. A moment later, a secondary explosion erupted as the drone's oversized power core suffered a catastrophic meltdown. I held my breath, waiting to see if the gunboat would go off, either its cores or its missile batteries taking the rest of the ship with it. The thing gently floated backward, a lifeless husk. If there was anyone still on board, they were far more worried about their levels of O2 than trying to get the ship to move.

I grit my teeth and returned my focus to the other ship that we may or may not still have. " What about the hauler?"

Sam was watching over a screen that showed our little relay drone flying through the empty freight bays of the hauler. "So far so good," said Sam. "The locks aren't open, so I can't tell if they've actually followed orders."

"X-Talia, can you send our mining drone over there and we can cut into it?"

X-Talia gave a nod of her head before reporting that the mining drone had been launched. It would take a few minutes for it to get close. I monitored the telemetry of our now derelict pirate vessel and brought the Retribution closer to the cargo hauler. I didn't want to get too close. There were still about eight mining vessels that didn't trust us, and who knew whether or not the hauler had been rigged to blow.

It was a long and nerve-wracking process to have the mining drone cut its way through the lock and send in the relay drone. As asked, they had turned off the gravity and canned the air. This meant the relay drone could fly through the ship and check for any surprises. We didn't find any. That pirate fighter was out there watching us, likely having called for backup. That would probably be coming around in the next few hours.

"What do you need in order to take control?" I asked X-Talia.

"I need to be plugged into the systems like you did to the Res-a-tesseract."

"Can we have a drone do it?"

X-Talia shook her head. "We don't have anything with the arms needed."

"So I guess I'm going on a spacewalk."

"Be careful," Sam said as I vacated my seat. She slipped into mine, taking control of the Retribution.

"Line us up close to the lock," I said, fiddling with the device I was going to have to plug into the systems closet in the possibly hostile vessel.

The short trip was creepy and nerve-wracking. The desolate ship was dead quiet without atmosphere, and I kept waiting for something to explode or shoot me or something, but nothing actually happened. I drifted into the living and working corridors that reminded me a lot of the flying brick, popping up the systems cabinet and plugging in the device so X-Talia could take some type of control over the vessel. It didn't take long. Oddly enough, she couldn't copy her base code, so we were going to have to fly pretty close in order for her to remote control the hauler. That was fine by me.

We headed back to the chunk of gunboat, and once that was welded to the hull, we'd be trying to skedaddle. With our modified mining drone, I didn't even need to be outside to do the welding. It was a nerve-wracking two days as we gathered our prizes and flew off deeper into the asteroid fields, changing course several times to throw off any would-be pursuers, all while taking stock of our ill-gotten gains.

Losing the little fighter drone hurt. The thing had functioned amazingly. Its overpowered Core and gravity emitters made it quick. Its lack of internal environmental area made it small. The thing had worked almost flawlessly. Having another gunboat would have been great for spare parts as well as everything we could pull out and sell. Unfortunately, the front half of it had been blown away. By some miracle, the shield generator had survived along with both power cores, though the one connected to the shield had suffered some damage. Its gravity drive had come out unscathed as well.

We had a choice. We could cobble together another drone, this one with a shield, or we could sell the shield generator and get other supplies. We needed to figure out a way to capture the smaller fighters. They would be a lot easier to convert to drones. In the end, I decided to set some time aside to talk with Sam and X-Talia about our future plans. We needed a full set of blueprints and a road map to get there. For now, we should probably celebrate our success. Quite honestly, quite probably our first success.

Six more weeks, two more ships. The two ships were fighters, well, I mean fighters in the same way that I mean gunboat or cargo ship, that is to say that they were small and they had guns. The first one was a converted shuttle. It had twin chain ripper cannons, and much like our cute little attack drone, it also had two exterior-mounted missiles. We managed to take that one out by surprise—chain cannon to the face of the guy flying it—which literally meant that we had a shuttle with minimum damage and almost all the working parts.

The second one was a modified freight hauler much like the Flying Brick minus the freight container and with a jumped-up gravity drive and a rail gun. This one also carried four missiles. Unfortunately, because we had to fight them both at the same time, the one with the rail gun ended up taking a missile to the rear, overloading its power core and taking out the aft end of the ship along with the gravity drive. Bad luck for us, but it was another one of those things where we came out unscathed.

Fun fact, the Gravity Drive did not create gravity. The machine was essentially a complicated power distributor. I'm not sure why I never realized this before. Obviously, you can't send gravity through electrical conduit. The actual gravitational effect was produced by the emitters, whether that be the internal dampening systems, the main gravity emitters that pulled the ship in various directions, or the gravity decking, which produced the ability to stand up in the middle of space. Either way, the fact that I have spent my whole life in space and not realized that the Gravity Drive did not produce actual gravity was one of those mind-exploding moments.

We had taken enough shield emitters off the derelict gunship to fully recoat the Retribution. Its face still looked terribly deformed, but it was now behind a set of shields. We also managed to replace the slagged point defense cannon with the good one from the derelict. In the end, we sold the shield generator. It was the thing with the highest price on it. There wasn't a lot we could do about it. What we got in return was almost worth it: a mini foundry.

The mini foundry was one of those things that didn't really make a lot of sense if it wasn't a very long trip to the nearest orbital foundry. It was slow, took a lot of energy, and produced a lot of waste heat. Not the kind of thing that the average person wants on their ship. It basically required its own power core, which we had, and it just didn't function up to par with the orbital foundries. It was one of those machines that was great when you didn’t have support. Like when you're bootstrapping up in a new system or unable to simply fly into port. If only we had a very large ship with a lot of space on board that we could throw in a few additional servers and have a bunch of drones run said foundry and simply just tack on some extra radiators. Oh wait, we did. The hauler was quickly turning into the mobile base of operations, but we weren't exactly mining asteroids. We had all this refined material that could be collected, cut into smaller pieces, and fed into the mini foundry which would spit out metal stock for any number of machines.

Next on the list was an extruder so we could turn that stock into structural supports, then maybe some type of laser cutting machine so we could turn plates into various panels for things. If we could keep up with the way things were going, we'd be six months out from having our own little mini drone factory. The problem with that is it all required specific components that we weren't going to be able to build: computer chips, cameras, lenses, lasers, data arrays, all that stuff.

In time, we could theoretically be self-sufficient, but that was a tall order. What we needed was to be able to form the structural components of most of our drones and stuff, and trade high-end equipment like power cores and shield generators for all the little minutiae like batteries, cabling, and processors. Oddly enough, things were going quite well. I'm sure David Sullivan was still making out like a bandit being my only point of contact. But we were also considering maybe making a small mining drone ship that would release a few drones, do some mining, and then transport that automatically to the Free Light Consortium orbital foundries. We didn't know what it was gonna take to get it registered legally so it wouldn't be tagged as connected to us by the mercenaries or the pirates, but that was a project certainly on the drawing table. Everything was going just fine until we got a message.

"GRANT!" X-Talia seemed to scream over the intercom.

I woke with a start, Samantha pulling her head off my chest and looking around the dimly lit ship.

"What?" I slurred, my mind still hazy. Not certain if X-Talia's voice had come in my head or the real world.

"Incoming message," X-Talia said.

I rolled out of bed and stumbled across the few steps into the rec room, which now housed the ship's control systems.

"How many?" I asked in a panic.

"One," X-Talia replied, her voice sounding slightly confused. She was having a hard time of it these days. The Res-a-tesseract had been wired with a butt load of cameras. In this new ship, she could only see me in a few select places.

I grabbed hold of my hardsuit and started trying to pull on the legs.

"What are you doing?"

I looked down at my leg shoved through one leg of the hardsuit and realized this was stupid. The incoming missile would be here long before I got the damn hardsuit on. I flopped into the chair and pulled up the gun systems. "Where is it?"

"The message?" X-Talia asked, sounding even more confused.

"Message?" Sam stumbled in behind me in a black tank top and panties.

"Yes, I said incoming message."

I slumped into my chair. “I thought you said incoming missiles.”

"Oh." The two-dimensional image of X-Talia popped up on one of my screens, covering her mouth, giggling at me.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"Just play the message."

"Sure."

There was a moment of delay before an oddly accented voice came over the speakers. It was female and sounded considerably less concerned despite the circumstances the person was reporting.

"Mayday, mayday, this is Zoia of the Black Adder. My ship has been disabled by fire from pirates. I have two hours of oxygen and don't think I'm going to be getting life support up and running before I'm out. Is anybody out there listening? Please respond. Be warned, the other pirate is probably disabled, but might get their ship online faster. Mayday, mayday, mayday, is anybody out there?"

I slowly turned my head to Sam, mouth agape. She had a similar expression. "Well, shit."

18: Refactor 3

"Mayday, mayday, this is Zoia of the Black Adder. My ship has been disabled by fire from pirates. I have two hours of oxygen and don't think I'm going to be getting life support up and running before I'm out. Is anybody out there listening? Please respond. Be warned, the other pirate is probably disabled, but might get their ship online faster. Mayday, mayday, mayday, is anybody out there?"

One new line demon, repeat the previous recording that is Mayday, Mayday, Mayday.

I finished playing the recording for the third time and turned my head towards Sam. "What do we do?"

Sam looked at me as though she was offended. "We go get her!" she said rather forcefully, not quite a yell, but close to it.

I put the Retribution in motion using the attached coordinates that came along with the message. "You sure?"

Sam crossed her arms and looked at me like I wasn't the one thinking this through. "Of course, I'm sure. You're just gonna let somebody die?" I kept silent for a little too long. I'm sure I looked like I was being quiet and broody, but there were some things I didn't think Sam was calculating correctly. "What?" she asked. "Are you really so cold as to leave somebody out there and suffocate?"

"What kind of ship do you think the Black Adder is?" I asked, looking up at her and waiting for her to think that one through.

Her hard expression softened slightly, the tension in her crossed arms decreasing a bit.

"I don't know, why?"

"Where are you going to hide?"

Sam turned her head to look around the galley/rec room combo. The only other rooms were engineering, the head, and the bunks. Likely all of those would be accessible by anyone on the ship.

"Uh..."

"And the accent?"

Sam returned her attention back to me, a confused look on her face. I gave it some time to sink in. "The huge ship," she said more to the air in front of us than to me specifically. I could see the lights going on.

"Did we ever find out what Zatochi is?" I asked X-Talia.

The two-dimensional image, patiently waiting on one of the screens, perked up. "Oh yeah," her avatar dropped from one screen into the one below it and she pulled open a window. I inwardly chuckled at the pointless animation. The fact that she physically did things inside the screens was one of those things that just made her seem more human than she was.

"Ok. So this is all timeline stuff and I'll summarize these big blocks of information here. Basically, the Zatochi are a group of people who left Earth a very long time ago. They literally moved as far as possible away from the rest of us. You can think of them like a lost colony except that we eventually found them. Best I can tell they're a bunch of pretentious assheads that think of themselves as something other than human. Though, the data I found is a little contradictory. Separating the Zatochi as a people from the Zatochi as a government or nation is a little bit iffy. They're genetically altered to be hardier as a people. Their general policy is that pristine worlds with life are to be kept as wildlife preserves. Worlds that can be terraformed into something Earth-like are to be turned into wildlife preserves. And the large majority of them live in space stations. They're extraordinarily territorial as a government type and have an extremely high military presence. All that said, it seems to be more for show. As long as you don't cross their actual lines, they seem to be reasonable. Trying to peg the Zatochi as an overall people type, however, is a little more complicated, as it should be. Generally speaking, their people. Expect all the variation that comes with that."

"Well, that's not as bad as I was expecting," I returned my attention back to Sam, who was starting to look a little unsure. "I'm pretty sure that girl is Zatochi. She got in a fight with a pirate with a ship called the Black Adder. An adder is a snake, some type of legless, slithering, carnivorous creature with very potent venom. My gut is she's either a mercenary or a bounty hunter, likely the latter if she's after a pirate in this system."

Sam turned the information over for a long while, her lips moving back and forth while pressed together in an expression that was absolutely adorable. Never mind the fact that she was still just standing there in a tank top and panties. Finally, she took a deep breath, returned her glowing ember eyes back to me, and said, "We can't just leave her out there."

I nodded and returned my attention back to the consoles. "We should be there in about 90 minutes."

"What if it's a trap?" Sam asked.

"We'll launch the fighter drone before we get there and approach with caution," I looked up towards X-Talia, who gave me a nod. "Well, let's hope this doesn't go terribly."

I found the ship design rather odd. It was flatter and wider than the things I was used to. The aft end of the port and starboard nacelles looked like they contained actual freaking torch drives. This thing looked like it was made to strike fast and hard. Torch drives meant G forces, more so than the usual caused by gravitational pull. The outer hull was painted black, which reduced albedo, something most people didn't care about unless they were the sort to sneak up on other ships. Alarm bells would have been ringing if the thing didn't look chewed up and spit out. A large chunk of the forward port nacelle was missing. The shield points across the whole front and part of the dorsal region had been destroyed. The ship's skin was pitted and packed with holes. However, it didn't look that terribly damaged compared to what it had attacked.

The other ship was on the edge of our long-range sensors, which admittedly were kind of shit. That one made the Retribution look like a toy. Some type of cargo hauler, largely modified to turn it into a small frigate. We were too far to get any real detail, but its shields were out, its weapons disarmed, and its power was likely down. I don't know if the ship was dead, but if there was anyone alive on it, they were probably contacting their friends and trying to get things back online.

I looked at the ship we were attempting to save the pilot of and turned to look at Sam. Her expression said that she also found the ship design perplexing. Sure, a few things have been weird in this sector, calling their credits "Sen," trusting people to dock without a docking computer, and ships with chemical-based reaction control systems. But honest-to-god torch drives? I couldn't even imagine the fuel cost. It still had large gravity emitters, so there was no doubt it was more of an auxiliary acceleration system.

"Thoughts?"

Sam shook her head.

"Contact the person before they run out of O2?" X-Talia suggested.

I shrugged and hit the comm. "Black Adder, this is Grant of the Retribution. Do you copy?"

There was a moment's delay before a woman's voice responded.

"This is Zoia of the Black Adder. I copy loud and clear. Are you responding to my distress call?" The woman sounded tense.

"Yes, we are.”

“Very low on O2. What is the chance you will be here within 20 minutes?"

"ETA is five minutes. Which side is your docking port?"

"Oh, that iss good." I could hear the sheer and utter relief in the girl's voice. "Lock is on starboard side."

"Standby."

We drifted past the dead ship. There was no sign of any EMF drive keeping it stable, but it didn't appear to be rotating. So either it had come to a complete rest before powering completely down or maybe there was a chemical-based Reaction Control System that didn't require as much power. Stars only knew. We rotated the Retribution to line up the docking port. The thing looked weird. It had two separate rings around it as if the thing was designed to dock with two different sized locks. Hells, maybe it was. The ship itself was like no design I had ever seen. We drifted closer on EMF, making minor adjustments until the two locks kissed. There was a moment's delay before the mechanical connection pulled tight, locking the two ships together as one unit.

"Lock is connected," I said over the comm to the other ship.

"Great. I'll be right over."

I looked up at Sam. "Shall we greet our new guest?"

Sam pressed her lips into a thin line. As much as she had wanted to rescue the hapless person, this was gonna be the first time in several months that someone other than a bounty hunter—and to be fair, this person was probably a bounty hunter—was going to see her. She gave me a quick nod as I pulled myself out of my seat and exited the galley. We had made sure we were going to be armed before this Zatochi person came on board. The whole thing was nerve-wracking. There was a loud clank as the locks opened on the other side. A moment's delay as the tiny room filled with breathable atmosphere. Through the little viewport glass in the door, I could see a figure yanking off a helmet, and then the inner lock opened, and I got to take in my first sight of the Zatochi named Zoia.

The woman who entered wasn't particularly tall. While I couldn't quite tell her body shape due to the considerably cool-looking black-with-pink-highlight hardsuit, she seemed to have a stockier frame. She had a duffel bag, also black, slung over one shoulder and the helmet of her hardsuit slung under the other. The helmet had protrusions like it had cat ears, complete with a pink interior, though they also looked to be packed with sensors, so I'd let that go. The woman herself had been stuck in a suit for well over an hour while the O2 dwindled, and her face showed it. Her dark brown hair with a shock of purple clung to her scalp and face via a thin sheen of sweat. There were slight blue bags under her eyes as though she hadn't slept in a while, and she gave off an aura of being somewhat exhausted. Despite the initial look, her dark eyes met mine, and her lips parted in a confident, almost cocky grin. Her skin was an almond color, and there was a vague sense of Asian heritage in her eyes and facial shape, not as overt as X2, more subtle. Whether by heritage or design, I wasn't sure. She shuffled her duffel bag higher up on her shoulder and held out a hand.

"I thank you for timely rescue. Name is Zoia Rajirie."

I instinctively moved my own arm out to take her hand, only to have her grasp me by the forearm in a shake I pretty much only used in fantasy games.

"Uh, Grant Takata." Shit, I probably shouldn't have used my actual name.

"I cannot express how much I am happy to not be on my ship at the moment. Though I am going to strongly suggest that we dis..." The woman with the strange accent suddenly cut off. I knew why when she shifted her weight to look behind me, one eye going slightly wider, mimicking the way her cocky smirk seemed to move to that side of her face. "Well, damn, you are hot."

Well, now I had to turn and look. Sam had only half of her body peeking out from behind the hatch. Her red cheeks turned a darker crimson and she seemed surprised. "Uh, thanks?"

Zoia finally released my arm and gave a sharp wave. "Zoia Rajirie. It is a pleasure to be meeting you."

"Sam."

"Pleasure to be meeting you, Sam. Love the horns, by the way."

"Oh."

Was this girl flirting with Sam? She had literally been on the ship for just a few moments.

"Oh, like I was saying, I suggest that we disengage as soon as possible. I am concerned that..."

"MISSILE INBOUND," X-Talia shouted.

Sam's eyes went wide. I'm sure my eyes went wide, and I can only imagine that Zoia's eyes went wide as she exclaimed, "Shit. That is what I was say."

She said more, but I was too busy bursting past Sam in a mad dash to the control station.

"X-Talia, get us separated."

"Already on it."

I slammed my ass into my chair and took the controls, dumping a bunch of the energy into the port side gravity emitter to pull us away from the other ship. Theoretically, that would also pull the other ship. For the first moment in my life, I found myself wishing I had some type of chemical propellant-based reaction control system. Maybe, just maybe, the people around here weren't quite as backwards as I had originally thought.

"Hatch is shut. Oh, where is your bridge?"

I think I heard Sam explain that it was damaged as I activated the point-defense cannons and tried to get Zoia's ship out of my line of fire. It wasn't one missile, it was two, because of whatever law caused missiles to launch in twos. Maybe it was a buy-one-get-one-free deal all the installers had; maybe missiles just worked better in pairs. Technically speaking, that had been my experience. Once above the line of the ship, the point-defense cannon started firing. Taking out the first missile was easy. The second was too low, and I was prioritizing getting away from Zoia's ship just a bit too much. Also, the missile wasn't targeting us.

Zoia screamed in anger as her ship seemed to split down the middle, exploding outward. Bits of debris pinging off the Retribution's shields. A stream of vulgar curses started in a language I understood and very quickly moved into something I didn't. The woman leaned over my chair, pointed at the other ship displayed on one of the screens, and said something.

"What?"

She repeated herself before realizing she wasn't speaking a language I understood.

"Any chance you have ability to fucking kill them?"

I shrugged. "Yeah. Sure. Can I take parts from their ship?"

I don't give fuck.

"X-Talia?" I asked.

X-Talia's avatar popped up on a side screen and gave me a nod. "Fighter drone is on a ballistic intercept trajectory."

"Alright, let's give them something to look at instead of watching our guns." I pulled the ship up around the debris field that was formerly Zoia's ship. I could feel her hovering over me, white-hot rage emanating from the girl and burning holes into my screens. In the background, I could hear Sam slipping herself into a soft suit.

"Two missiles inbound," X-Talia warned. We now had two functioning point defense cannons, and despite the size of the ship, they were only firing normal missiles. The missiles abandoned their fore-aft attack pattern to swerve out wide, trying to come at us from either side. That would have been a good tactic before we got that second cannon repaired.

"I got starboard. You take port," I said to X-Talia. I didn't wait for her to acknowledge.

"Got it." We both said at the same time.

I looked at the screen to find X-Talia looking back at me. “I got mine first.”

In a contest of human intuition versus machine probability calculations, the machine had won by 0.024 seconds. I didn't even realize we were in a competition.

"Very cute. Can we now fire at those fucking assholes?" Zoia asked in her thick accent from right behind me.

"We're about to. Yes," X-Talia said, moving her gaze from me to the girl behind me.

"You are a strange AI."

X-Talia shrugged.

We were closing the distance more rapidly, and the pirate ship Zoia had attacked was showing up more clearly on the feeds. It was messed up. The hauler was easily six or seven times larger than the Black Adder, covered in shield points, with multiple turrets, and looking like some cosmic horror took chunks out of it. This spoke to the power of Zoia's little ship.

"Two more missiles inbound," X-Talia said.

"Not a very fast fire rate. How are we on our trajectory?"

"Ready to open fire in 32 seconds."

The ripper cannon on the fighter drone, the new and improved fighter drone, ripped into the place X-Talia assumed the system's cabinet to be. It was in a reasonably intact part of the ship, so it was fair to assume they were firing the missiles from the bridge. Tracer rounds from one of its turrets shot up towards the fighter drone but quickly faded as the drone passed.

"Shit. I think we got it," X-Talia said, a note of surprise in her voice.

"Anywhere else we should punch a hole?" I asked, more to the girl behind me than to X-Talia.

"Fly by again and take out port side turrets. Don't want them coming back on while I'm trying to board. Hey, you got a place to refill O2? And where is your head?"

"O2's over there," Sam said, pointing towards the wall only a few paces from the hatch that led out to engineering. "Head's on the other side."

Zoia dropped her bag on the table with a heavy thud. Then awkwardly reached back and pulled out an O2 tank from her hard suit's pack. She shoved it into its receptacle and made her way to the head.

I looked at Sam. She looked at me.

"Well, she's kind of..."

"Intense?" Sam finished for me.

"Yeah, that's a good word for it."

"Considering the situation, I guess it's to be expected."

I nodded my agreement.

It only took a few minutes for the drone to take out the turrets and for our passenger to return from the head.

"Sam, could you do me favor?" Zoia said, pulling the canister off its refilling rack and holding it out to the red-skinned splicer girl. "Can you shove that in its receptacle?"

"Um, sure," Sam said hesitantly, taking the canister as Zoia turned her back to her and started unzipping her duffel bag. Out came a carbine, black and boxy. She unfolded the weapon, snapping it into place and slamming an ammunition magazine into its proper receptacle.

"Ok. If you get me close, I think I can blow the lock and take care of the parasites inside."

"We have a modified mining drone. We can just cut the lock open," I suggested.

Zoia grinned. A toothy, evil-looking thing that caused my skin to itch. "I like the way you think. Let's do that."

"Did you want help?" I asked hesitantly as Zoia snapped her helmet back on. The modified mining drone was already busy cutting its way through the interior lock, and our new passenger was taking position up by our lock. She seemed to consider it for a moment.

"No offense, but I don't know you. Not worth the risk. Do you have room in your freezer?"

"Room for what?" Sam asked.

"Uh, a body or whatever parts are left of it," Zoia said matter-of-factly.

"Uh, I can make some room," Sam offered.

The woman behind the faceplate smirked again. "Just like that, huh? No questions asked? I'd like to know what you've been up to lately, but that'll have to wait till later. As soon as I'm out the lock, take the ship out, just in case shit goes sideways and the ship goes up with me in it."

"Sure," I said as Zoia made her way into the lock. I certainly wasn't going to risk it now. I was rather glad she had rejected my offer of help. "Come on, Sam, let's back off."

It was well over an hour before we received a message.

"Ship is clean. Request extraction."

Again, Sam and I exchanged looks and we simultaneously shrugged.

"X-Talia, can you bring us in nice and easy?"

The two-dimensional avatar blinked as though confused. "You're not gonna do it?"

"No, we're gonna have another person on board and I gotta fix our modified bed situation." I got out of my seat as Sam stripped herself back out of the soft suit. I could work pretty decently in the hard suit, but the soft suits were a bitch for moving around in, and it looked like Sam had intended to help me. We had originally removed the mattresses and racks on each side of the little hallway, placed down a chunk of metal to bridge the gap, and then stuffed the large mattress Sam had me buy a long time ago into the hole so we could share a bed. With another person, that was going to be awkward. I was hoping between the two of us, we could get the mattress out and the racks put back to normal before we managed to obtain our surprise passenger.

Sam was remaking the bunks when Zoia reboarded, dragging most of a body minus the left leg into the galley. Clearly, this had been her mark. Fortunately, she had taken the time to wrap the majority of her victim up, so she wasn't smearing blood across the deck plating. I appreciated that. With her back on board, I maneuvered the ship up to the dorsal side of the hauler and X-Talia set the modified mining drone to welding our two vessels together.

Theoretically, there would be some other ship coming our way to render aid to their friends. Moving such a large vessel in the manner we were was a particularly cumbersome task. That said, space was large and vast. Even at a one or two G acceleration, it wouldn't take terribly long before we were back in the thick of the asteroids and well away from the scene of the crime so to speak. Zoia was taking her time in the sany box, something I completely understood. When you spend a lot of time in a hard suit, you relish those moments. I had been mostly inactive, but I was still claiming the shower as soon as I was confident the new woman wasn't going to murder us.

When Zoia did get out of the shower, she looked like a completely different person. The lack of a hard suit made the change even more drastic. She had her dark brown hair with a shock of purple pulled back and hanging over her shoulders. Her dark cargo pants were tucked into her military-like boots. The fabric looked rather durable and was covered with large pockets tight at the thighs and hips, and fastened with a very professional-looking belt. From the waist down, she looked military. I couldn't quite place what she looked like from the waist up. Her shirt had that tank top feel but was made of a thicker material tucked into her pants. Much like Sam's graphic t-shirts, it had a symbol on the front, painted in a neon green that almost seemed to glow in the fluorescent overheads. Again, it looked like a tight, durable material. However, the opening under the arms that showed skin made it seem somewhere between loungewear and dress wear, and I just couldn't place. She shrugged into a black jacket made of a similar durable-looking material, highlighted with vibrant purple lines and a couple of strips of neon green that matched the shirt. Sam was a hot gothic succubus doctor chick. Zoia was attractive, but also extraordinarily intimidating. She looked like she could kick my ass, and considering that she had very recently brought in a dead guy to put in my freezer, I think I'd be happy to drop her off with the first mining barge we came across, and not see the girl again. At least I was getting some salvage out of this deal.

"That is better," Zoia said, taking a seat at the table and pulling out a tablet from her duffel bag. "You got Rift Drive on this boat?"

“No.”

"Well, that complicates things. I'll pay for a ride through the gate, though, and I'd like about half the salvage."

I looked at Sam, who was starting to make breakfast. She looked at me as if asking with her eyes, "Are you gonna tell her?"

"Uh, we can't use the gate."

"What? Why not?" Came Zoia's confused question.

"We pissed off the mercenaries by capturing a pirate vessel."

"That is stupid," she said before realization seemed to dawn on her. "Fuck. This is Rixa." She tapped her lip for a few moments. "I did not think of that." She cocked an eyebrow and tilted her head. "But I had Rift Drive. So it wasn't a problem."

Apparently, I wasn't the only one who talked to myself.

Silence descended upon the rec room turned control room. Only the sounds of the stove and the gentle click of Sam's spatula on a pan made any noise other than the ever-present environmental blower.

"You know, this is pretty shitty day for me," Zoia started. "This is second ship I've lost, and I got quite attached to that one."

"Well, how much was your guy worth?" Sam said, as though she was trying to lighten the mood.

"45K. 38 if I go to the Zatochi. I wonder if I can cut him in half. Collect on both, you know. Of course, he's worth less dead. Blowing up the ship was kind of a worst-case scenario, but the fucker never goes on station."

I looked at Sam and gave her a meaningful look. She looked back, shrugged as though confused as to why I was a little annoyed with her asking, but her follow-up expression told me she had figured it out. She made an "o" with her mouth and grit her teeth.

I tried to change the subject. "We've only got one contact at the moment, but maybe David could find you a ride out of the system."

"David? You mean David Sullivan?"

Small fucking galaxy or cluster of systems. "Uh, yes."

Zoia shook her head. "That's your only contact? Guy is piece of shit. You should stay away from him."

"Yeah, but he's kind of my only contact that doesn't wanna shoot me."

Zoia tilted her head as if to concede the point. "This is a bit of shitty system. You either play by SMG rules, get out, or get fucked."

"I think we've pretty well been fucked," Sam said.

Zoia turned to look at her. "Oh? How?"

Sam pointed the spatula at the room at large. "This isn't our ship. They filled ours with holes."

"Whose ship is it?"

"Sentinel Mercenary Group," I replied.

Zoia burst out with a hearty laugh. Some terrible impersonation of a Slavic accent. That's what it reminded me of. All she had to do was ask for some vodka and start telling me about the old country, and she'd fit in with some old movie portraying Old Earth Russians. Rajirie. I'd have to look up the last name. Maybe it was Slavic. That said, my last name was Japanese, and you didn't hear me screwing up my L's.

Sam finished, started dishing out breakfast, and I joined her and Zoia at the table. X-Talia was being quiet, playing the part of the simple ship AI. Our unexpected passenger brooded over her breakfast.

"If you can’t go to a station, how are you salvaging material?"

"Cutting them up, using the parts for various things, and selling extra stuff to David for other stuff we need."

"You know, he's gotta be ripping you off on price."

I shrugged. "He's the only contact I've got."

Zoia shook her head. "Nobody likes that guy."

"What about that girl that's with him?" Sam asked, pointing at me because she hadn't actually met the person.

"X2," I filled in.

Zoia shook her head again. "That's called Stockholm syndrome. I'm pretty sure he bought her like 30 years ago."

"30 years? There's no way the girl is that old."

"Cosmetics. He keeps her looking young."

My eyes went to Sam, who gave me a sideways shrug as if to say, "Yeah, I can do that."

I let out a long sigh. "Can anybody pick you up?"

Zoia tapped a lip. "I got some people who owe me favor. I'll send out message as soon as I can. If you don't mind, I'm going to eat this meal, use your head one more time, and then crash. I don't think I've slept in like, 20 or 30 hours."

“Bunks are right down there."

The girl gave a sharp nod of her head, poked at her tablet, pushed it off to the side, and then started shoving the rest of the food in her face.

My focus landed on Sam once Zoia was in the rack. She gave me a weary smile and a shrug. I found her uncertainty comforting. How had it come to this? We now had a bounty hunter on board and another body in the freezer. Some universe based humor to slap me in the face.