“It’s a corvette.” My statement hung in the room like a dark cloud.

“A Sacorp 90-30 Mark 3 corvette, to be specific,” X-Talia added unhelpfully. No one responded.

The holographic image spun in place above the table. Zoia was leaned back in her chair, arms crossed, feet propped on another chair. Sam sat in a slightly similar but less reclined position, her arms folded in a way that clearly said, “I am not happy about this.” Her lips pressed into a grim line. X-Talia’s image was parked in another chair, the flat plane of her two-dimensional projection seeming to point at the holographic representation of our enemy’s ship instead of any of us. I sat across the table, reading off the little tooltips that labeled the ship’s various parts.

The Hammer was the only purpose-built warship I’d seen since coming to this sector. Its angular body was designed to deflect radar. On either side of its hull were stubby wings with bulbous tips—gimballed mountings for a Hell Lance particle weapon and a 200-millimeter railgun. The ventral and dorsal sides sported missile ports—a full eight in total—and it was covered with retractable point-defense flak cannons.

“We can’t just blow it up, can we?” The question came from Sam.

My gaze shifted to her, noting the expression that resembled constipation.

“No,” Zoia stated simply and matter-of-factly. Somehow, in some way, we had to get Reginald Maximus off that ship in enough pieces to confirm his identity and his death.

“Any ideas?” X-Talia asked, popping up a whiteboard behind her and off to the right.

Silence settled into the room, broken only by the atmospheric blowers.

“Sabotaged drones?” Sam suggested, noticing it was one of the previously listed options from a brainstorming session.

Zoia shook her head. “Tried that. It was caught before the resupply made it to the ship.”

“Explosive tracking device?” Sam tried next, her eyes flicking to the next item on the old notes.

Again, Zoia shook her head. “Can’t get explosives onto the station.” She was speaking from experience—she’d tried.

“Hit them with a missile on the back end?” Sam tried once more.

“Possible with a good sneak attack,” X-Talia said, changing the holographic image floating above the table to show a missile coming in from behind the Hammer and detonating on its aft end. A colorful wave of simulated radiation washed over its shields. “Even if we sneak a few missiles in to punch a hole in the shields and damage the hull, we won’t know where the target is. Hitting certain engineering spaces or wherever they store their missiles—probably around here—” two spots on the now-translucent hologram lit up “—could set off secondary explosions.”

Sam slumped in her chair, looking dejected. “So either we get him off his ship or find another way to disable it,” she said. “But then what are we supposed to do? Breach the hull and storm it with just one or two of us against who knows how many armed mercs?”

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“Yeah, that’s another problem,” Zoia said.

I leaned back in my seat and sighed.

“I suggest we keep doing what we’re doing,” X-Talia said. “We recently got that message from the miners, pointing out where the pirates are hiding. Obviously it’s a trap, but it plays into our plan to make them set one up so we can counter it.”

I rubbed my temples. “Yeah…I guess let’s just focus on that.”

Our counter-ambush worked both well and…kind of terribly. We sent a drone falling through the center of the ambush point in a trajectory that made it look like it was making an attack run, which caused our would-be ambushers to move. Unfortunately, space is vast. There was no way to pinpoint where any of the ambushing ships would be, and out of the two dozen, we only managed a hit-and-run on two. We sent a couple of “thanks for the heads-up” messages to a handful of ships, but we weren’t going to be able to claim our kills. Overall, it felt like a waste of resources. We did, however, cross-reference a few of the ships on our list, which would help us keep tabs on them.

A few days later, I was sitting at the kitchen table one morning when Zoia emerged from Sam’s room, poured herself a cup of coffee, and flopped into a chair.

“What’s up?” I asked.

Zoia’s face contorted into an odd expression, and she muttered something that made me chuckle. “That girl has a very strange obsession with bodily fluids.”

It was an accurate statement. Sam did indeed have a rather odd obsession with body fluids—which brought me to something else I’d noticed these last couple of weeks: the relationship between me and Sam wasn’t exactly normal. By that, I mean it really wasn’t much of a relationship at all. Somehow, I—and probably Zoia—had become part of Sam’s little harem. In stories I’d read, it was typically a guy who ended up with multiple partners. But in this scenario, Sam was the main character, and I was essentially a side piece.

I was pulled out of my musings by an odd look from Zoia.

“What?” I asked again.

With her coffee cup in one hand, she extended a single finger, pointing behind me.

“Your AI wants your attention.”

I turned in my chair to see X-Talia standing in the middle of the room, looking toward me but not at me, with an odd expression on her face. “You okay?” I asked.

Her now-red eyes flicked up to meet mine. She stared for a moment before giving a slight shrug. A visual display of an audio player popped up next to her—its triangular “play” button morphing into “pause” as an audio track began to roll. Several bars wavered, reflecting the voice’s volume and pitch.

“All armed Free Light Mining Consortium vessels, immediately report to the Free Light Mining Consortium starport. We are under attack. I repeat, we are under attack. Again, all armed Free Light Mining Consortium vessels, return to the Free Light Mining Consortium starbase to help in defense.”

The transmission ended.

“Who’s attacking?” Zoia and I both asked almost in unison.

X-Talia’s face twitched into an expression of uncertainty. “The Sentinel Mercenary Group, I think. Do you want me to set a course?”

I glanced back at Zoia, who had one eyebrow cocked as though stuck in suspended surprise. “Yeah, I guess,” I replied.

Author’s Notes: I imagine this story ending with the bad guy and Grant sword fighting in hard suits on a chunk of ship open to space as Grant remarks how utterly ridiculous this is. If anyone has even the slightest inkling of an idea on how to get there from here, please let me know.