We’d come up with the plan for the heist while Master was making his delivery on the surface, and Master liked it enough that he put me in charge of the whole thing! He said it was a test, for when he had a second ship that needed a captain. I’d still be his slave, but I’d have a ship of my own! And a crew!
I took a deep breath as Raven’s communication came in. All right. The cameras weren’t going to pick us up any longer. With a nod to the others, Cali, Carissa, Jaynie and I stepped out of a nearby bar that was just inside the range of the cameras Raven had looped. Now came our part.
I laughed at something Carissa said, but that upset my balance and, being more than slightly drunk, stumbled into Cali, who, also being quite drunk, fell against the panel outside where the two nice security officers were standing. We all laughed, even as the screen Cali was leaning on had several error messages come up.
The security guards were not amused, but Carissa simply smiled at one of them and made a proposition that would be illegal in three systems, which caught the men’s attention really fast, even if they seemed hesitant to follow through while on duty. And then they got really sleepy, just as the door to the place they were guarding opened up. So, being good girls, we pulled them inside so they could sleep.
As the doors closed behind us, I said without any signs of intoxication, “How’s it look, Raven?”
“Cali planted the repeater perfectly. I now have access to the stand-alone system. Alarms are offline, and I’ve looped the camera feeds. There are seven guards in the complex. Shearah’s drones are moving to take care of the two on perimeter patrol, and the one in the security office.”
“And where in this glorified warehouse should we be headed?”
“I’m working on decrypting their logs. There are two blocks that may be what we’re looking for. One was rented by the planetary government, and the other is Confederation Special Research Devision. Trying to find any references to Project: Hidden Champion.”
“Understood. Where are the four guards Shearah isn’t taking care of?”
“Standing guard over the two likely bays, two in front of each. Waypoints are on your HUD now.”
“Thanks, Raven.” I turned, and looked to Jaynie. “How are our sleepy friends?”
Looking up from the biomonitor scans she was taking, Jaynie nodded once. “The tranq patches are working fine. They have slightly increased metabolism because of augments, but they’ll be out of it for at least a couple hours.”
I nodded. “All right. If it looks like we’re going to be longer than that, we’ll just dose them again before they wake up. Let’s arm up and move out. Carissa and Cali, head for the planetary government block. Jaynie, you’re with me. Stay out of sight until we have the signal from Raven.”
They nodded, and we drew weapons and armor from our bracers, turning from a bunch of ‘party girls’ to a quick assault team. Without waiting for a signal, we moved out, splitting our party to cover the two bays. Even odds weren’t what I liked, but we couldn’t risk the guards at one bay hearing a fight and coming to find out what was going on, or do something worse, like call for help.
It was hard not to admire Jaynie’s backside in the skin-tight suit she wore as she took point. The… libertine nature of this crew certainly took some getting used to. I’d never… been with a woman before those bastards enslaved me and turned me over to Master. It was strange getting used to such a lifestyle. I kindof liked it, honestly.
We were almost to the SRD block when we got an update from Raven.
I smiled to myself once the alarms on the grates went down. As I moved my pets into the storage area, Raven sent me the non-looped sensor feeds, so I could direct my metallic minions along their way. One of them stayed in the ventilation system, and began making its way towards the security office. Two more went after the patrol. After a moment’s consideration, I directed the last spiderbot to cover the entrance, just in case anyone entered (or tried to escape).
Running the numbers, I saw that my spiderbots would hit the patrol first. Setting up on a section of wall that was just out of camera range, I had my two spiders stop moving, and wait. Drones like this were great for doing recon work, but their small size meant that they weren’t really much use as weapons, unless you were doing surprise attacks. My models were currently armed with two doses of the same tranquilizer Nyna’s team had used on the guards outside, but in the form of darts instead of patches laced with DMSO.
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Then I saw the two men in the uniform of the Confederation Army. They were relaxed, since this was a patrol of a storage unit, and no alarms had gone off, but I was slightly impressed to see that they had not allowed themselves to get careless or complacent. They had their weapons in a low ready position, and were on the lookout for trouble. Unfortunately for them, they didn’t look up.
On my command, the drones fired at their targets simultaneously, each hitting one of the Knelfi males on the neck. Clean hits, and the fast-acting tranquilizer lived up to its reputation, with the two men barely having time to register that they had been hit by darts before they fell to the ground.
I whispered into the comm line I had to Raven, “Patrol down.” Without waiting for a response, I shifted my focus back to the spiderbot moving through the vents. This one I had change from the normal pointed spider legs to their quieter ‘pad’ design. They couldn’t climb vertical surfaces in ‘pad’ mode, but they were almost silent, which is what I needed right now. Of course, this wouldn’t work in an actual military facility, but civilian facilities didn’t think about what people could do with ‘simple’ drones.
I looked through the drone’s cameras, and found the security office. The guy at the desk was half-watching the cameras, really only interested in if anything out of the ordinary happened. His main focus was on the tablet in front of him. I couldn’t tell the details from here, but it seemed like he was watching a movie. Well, a dart to the neck solved his movie at work problem.
“Security office clear. No threats detected.”
“All other threats clear. Cameras are looping, and I’ve edited the footage of you so far. No alarms detected. Project: Hidden Champion is located in the SRD block, Unit 34-234-B. Cali, the planetary government block appears to have mostly things that won’t interest us, but Unit 2694-23-Y is suspicious. There’s no listing of what is in there.”
“Understood. We’ll check it out. Maybe we’ll get some extra pay out of this.”
The timing was good. Just around the corner were the two soldiers flanking the entry to the block where what we wanted was being kept. After checking that Cali’s team was in position, I gave the count, and we painted targets in the HUD so we could do this as easily as possible. The count reached zero, and four guns opened fire, all using stun rounds. The soldiers weren’t in more than base uniforms, not even light tactical armor. The stun rounds made quick work of them, bringing them down before the alarm could be triggered. A slap patch of tranq helped keep them down.
“All opposition down. Let’s go find our prizes.”
Back on the ship, we were all gathered in the common area as Raven’s drone body oversaw the loading of some additional cargo to Charybdis Station, though she was also here in her virtual avatar. It didn’t take Mindread to see that Sana wasn’t exactly happy with the girls petting and pawing her new, catlike appearance. Unlike Kiki, she still had her knelfi face, though she now had cat ears, greatly enhanced agility and reflexes, a catlike tongue, and a tail. Her eyes were now slit like a cat’s, giving her impressive low-light vision. And her retractable claws would be good weapons against lightly armored foes.
Well, despite her not being quite happy with it, someone who was paying attention would notice that Sana was glistening in certain places, and I hadn’t even activated the heat on demand feature. I was happy to see that, even though she still resisted her lot in life, she was starting to adapt to her new station. It meant the conditioning was going well.
I brought this meeting to order by pulling Nyna into my lap, and saying, “All right, you lot. Well done on a nicely planned and executed heist! Let’s hear about what we just stole. Start with the stuff we went for. Raven, what can you tell us about Project: Hidden Champion?”
Virtual Raven turned away from Sana, and said, “Well, it is a nasty piece of work. Typical brainwashing methods are either brute force methods that are easily detected, like the Stepford devices, or they take a long time for the conditioning to set in. Project: Hidden Champion is attempting to make a weaponized system that acts on the optic nerve and basically acts like those ‘hypnosis device’ erotic stories Sheila has been reading lately.”
“RAVEN! You promised you wouldn’t tell!”
Raven giggled as we all had a bit of a laugh at the Princess’s embarrassment, and continued. “Oopsie! Anyways, it would both allow someone to implant triggers in someone’s mind, but overlapping commands could cause conditioning to set in in days or weeks instead of weeks or months, and the individual would have no memory of their being changed, and they wouldn’t be missed like they would if they disappeared for a couple months.”
“So basically, it is a spy service’s wet dream, and the only reason it was anywhere near the light of day is because some idiot let the Legion virus loose on the planet.” I nodded, and said, “How close are they to a working prototype?”
“Unfortunately, the facility they were using had almost been overrun by the Legion before they evacuated, so some of the data is corrupted. The physical device was ready, but the software, which is the important part, was only about 80% ready. Unfortunately, that has been pushed back further since there is evidence of corruption in the files, but they should be able to recompile from developer notes.”
“Keep a copy of the data, and begin working on a way to protect ourselves from stuff like this if someone uses it. A filter on our HUDs, maybe?”
“I’ll see what I can do, Captain.”
I sighed. “All right, and now for the fun part. What is this extra loot you guys brought back? It looks important.” I gestured to a black box that looked to be made of polished obsidian that was sitting in the center of the table where we had our meals.
Raven chuckled, and said, “Well, that appears to be the planetary governor’s personal retirement plan. That is a data recorder from one of the old Drake-Class colony/explorer vessels, back in the days of the United Nations Space Exploration Service. They were generation ships, flying at fractional c speeds between stars. They discovered the first Gateways, but were too large to pass through them. I don’t know where the Governor picked up this little gem, but it appears to be from the Juan Ponce de Leon, one of several colony ships that were never heard from again, until now.”
A ghost ship from the past? Exciting! Motioning Raven to continue, I asked, “So where did the Governor get his hands on this?”
“If the documentation is to be believed, a pirate discovered it while laying over in the Desolace system six years ago. The gateway there activated suddenly, and this module fell out of it. The pirate recorded the gate coordinates that the device came from, but wasn’t going to risk his ship on an uncertain reward. The only reason he was in Desolace, after all, is because the system is completely empty except for a tiny star barely bigger than a brown dwarf, and a lot of asteroids. Makes it a perfect place to rest and repair after a battle if you can’t afford to be seen by the authorities.”
“The pirate was later captured on a raid in Jagloth, and the Governor ‘acquired’ the device after the extensive interrogations of the pirate and his crew revealed what it was. What financial data I’ve been able to uncover suggests that the Governor was quietly putting together personal funds to finance an expedition to discover what happened to the Ponce de Leon. The potential profits if they found the ship would be staggering.”
That had us all leaning forward in our seats. “How staggering are we talking about?”
Raven smirked as she looked at me. “Owning a small planet kind of staggering, especially if they found anything… interesting.”
We all grinned at that thought.