Returning to the hab that I once called home was not a matter of simply flying there. To begin with, this ship had no star charts. I had no way of knowing where to go. People forget that for how mind-bogglingly huge space is, there's a lot of stuff floating around in it. Even a cube of space ten light years to a side could easily have a half dozen star systems in it. Now imagine a journey of fifty light years, a hundred, a thousand.

So first things first, we need star charts, and the best place to get them is the system beacon in orbit around the system primary. No FTL communications means that all information has to be delivered by courier and distributed. The system beacon is where that happens. A ship drops off a data package, which is transmitted to the rest of the system. It's basically the mail office for the entire star system.

Which means of course that it is also heavily patrolled, even out here in the Verge, and that tampering with a system beacon is a quick and easy way to get yourself blown out of space. So Hailey and I are going to have to get clever if we want to gain access to it long enough to find and download the star chart archive.

The best we've been able to come up with is creating some form of distraction to keep the patrols away long enough for us to attach the little transceiver Hailey'd come up with to data mine the beacon for the star chart archive. It was about the size of my fist and it would transmit directly to us in Subspace where we could loiter undetected. It's unlikely that anyone will be able to detect the transmission.

"You're just full of surprises aren't you, Hailey?" She gives me a questioning look.

"You're a cook, an engineer, a doctor, and even a hacker. What other talents are you hiding? You're starting to remind me of some of those shows about super spies." She blushed before giving me a grin.

"Maybe I am, better be careful, or you might just wake up to me in your quarters with a deal you can't refuse." Now I was the one flustered, blurting out the first thing that came to mind.

"Well if it's you, I'm sure whatever the deal was, I'd love to take it." My brain caught up to what my mouth had just said, and I froze, screaming internally.

Hailey didn't appear much better off than me, her blush had deepened, and I thought I heard a noise, not unlike the whistle of escaping steam. Why couldn't I help myself when it came to this girl? If we weren't getting all cuddly cooking breakfast, then I was flirting like some lovesick teenager.

I was glad to see her coming out of her shell more often though. She smiled more often and easily than before. She'd even caught me on the back foot with her quick reply. Still, sometimes I felt like she was only playing along out of fear that I might still kick her off the ship.

I hated feeling that way but I couldn't help it, the thought kept cropping up.

"Ehm, anyway, we need to come up with a distraction to give us the opportunity we need to gain access to the beacon. It has to be done in a way that the patrol for the beacon is the one that responds." I deliberately steer the conversation back to the matter at hand.

"It would need to be a problem directly related to the beacon for them to respond instead of one of the other patrols. Perhaps something involving the courier ship? We need more information." Hailey frowned in thought.

"I agree, we're not in any particular rush so why don't we spend some time observing first, and see if we find anything we can take advantage of. There has to be some kind of weakness we can exploit."

***

Three days later and we had our answer. The courier ship that brought the regular data package every day always followed the same route, like a mailman doing his rounds. We were in the captain's office off of the bridge making use of the holo-plotter to plan our operation.

"I could make a graviton mine, drop it in the path of courier's route to the beacon. It would pull them out of Subspace and likely burn out the drive system." Hailey lit up a spot on the system map.

"Sounds fancy, do we have the equipment for something like that?" This wasn't a warship, and we had no weapons so I was kind of curious about where she was going to get the hardware for this mine.

"It's actually rather simple and can be made from spare parts for the ship's systems. A basic grav-sensor is used to detect incoming ships with a graviton capacitor hooked up to a transmitter that dumps its entire supply of gravitons into the transmitter creating a graviton pulse. The pulse will only last a few seconds at most before the whole thing burns out, but that should be more than long enough to pull the ship out of Subspace." Hailey shrugged as if to say 'nothing to it'.

"Alright, sounds good to me. Anything I can do to help?" Hailey shook her head.

"No, assembly is fairly simple and shouldn't take me more than an hour for the beacon-breaker and the mine each. It's just a matter of connecting the components and loading the program before putting them in their casing." Well, now I felt kind of useless. Hailey was doing all the work and I was just sitting here doing nothing.

"Alright, sounds good. We disable the courier ship, the patrol goes to investigate, and I EVA over to plant the beacon-breaker."

"What? Captain that's far too dangerous for you-"

"Hailey, do you know anything about Itzli technology or how their systems are organized?"

"Well no, but-"

"I'm the one better suited for this task. I've done EVA hundreds of times before and never had any problems. So just let me do this part okay?"

"Alright Captain, if that's what you want."

"It is Hailey, thank you. Now, we've got a few hours until the next courier ship. I'm going to go see about setting up for the EVA. We'll drop that mine off a half hour before the courier ship arrives far enough away they shouldn't detect us dropping into realspace."

***

Three hours later I was standing in the airlock waiting, and Hailey was up on the bridge controlling the ship. Deploying the graviton mine had gone off without a problem and we were back at the system beacon. The courier should be showing up any moment now.

"Contact, one light vessel on a trajectory to the beacon." Hailey's soft voice in my ear alerted me.

"Right on time, now let's see what happens." I watched on my NIL as the arrow representing the courier ship intersected the dot for the graviton mine.

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"Graviton mine activation detected. Interdiction successful."

"And the patrol?" I watched the arrow of the patrol closely for anyone course change from its orbit around the beacon.

"Drive activation detected. Singularities forming. They are leaving to investigate." Sure enough, I could see the arrow change direction before its speed drastically increased.

"Alright, show time Hailey. Drop us out as close as you can to the beacon, I'll do the rest."

"Affirmative Captain, stay safe." There was a short rumbling noise, and then a brief sense of vertigo as we dropped out of Subspace.

I had already cycled the airlock so as soon as the transition alert was rescinded I had it open. The SUNNS EVA suit I was using was quite the piece of work. A graviton power cell provided days of power. The thrusters were ion engines instead of inert gas. It was bulkier but that was because it had a power assist exoskeleton integrated into it. It was less a simple EVA suit and more a suit of armor fit for a marine. It even had full NIL integration letting me fly the suit with my mind.

The beacon was a short distance away from the ship, only a few hundred meters at most. It was a large dodecahedron with a pair of cylindrical rods on the top and bottom leading to a pair of cones. The entire thing was coated in a gold-colored alloy to dissipate and reflect heat.

It took me no time at all to reach the beacon. I quickly located the maintenance hatch for the interior and set about gaining access. Most Itzli tech was relatively easy to break into, you just had to know the trick. Itzli security relied more on deterrence of actually messing with their tech in the first place than any rigorous security measures.

"Alright, I've triggered the maintenance routine on the beacon systems. That should unlock the hatch and let me access the mainframe." Sure enough, the hexagonal hatch slowly opened letting me inside.

I floated my way inside, the hatch being sized for much larger Itzli users. Inside was a maze of connecting rods, cables, and coolant hoses to a smaller dodecahedron-shaped housing. That had to be the mainframe.

"Alright, I see the mainframe. I'm making my way over to it now. How's that patrol looking, Hailey?"

"They are still at the location of the courier ship."

"Good, let's hope it stays that way." Navigating my way to the mainframe I looked for a console or a data port of some kind.

"That's strange, I can't seem to find any access points. Hold on a minute." I felt all over the casing searching for anything out of the ordinary.

I couldn't find anything so I moved to another side of the mainframe. I made a circuit around the entire core with no success. This made no sense, there had to be some way to access the mainframe for maintenance.

"C'mon Rama, you don't have all day," I mumbled to myself as I desperately searched for any clue.

Finally, I noticed a single triangular panel that was slightly discolored compared to the rest of the core. Did someone weld a cover over the access panel?

"Alright, I think I found the access panel. It looks like a cover has been welded over it for some reason. It's going to take me a minute to remove it." Thankfully this fancy EVA suit came with a full set of built-in tools including a dual-mode welding and cutting laser.

"Understood Rama. Please Hurry."

"Believe me, I don't want to be out here any longer than I have to, Hailey."

I carefully raised my arm in the zero-gee environment and triggered the welding laser in cutter mode. My helmet faceplate tinted as a bright orange beam came out of my gauntlet. I used my NIL to control the exoskeleton instead of manually controlling the suit to cut a precise line around the panel. I anxiously checked the clock as the minutes ticked by.

Finally, the laser cut out as I finished cutting around the entire panel. I grabbed the whole thing with my palm, the magnets in my gloves holding onto the metal panel, and slowly pulled it away. I felt something tug loose on the back of the panel and as I pushed it away and let go, it slowly began to spin revealing a mess of computer components and cabling on its back.

"Huh, well that explains that. Looks like someone's been naughty. That panel was welded on to hold a data miner, and I'm betting when I pulled it off and disconnected it that it purged itself. Clever."

"Captain! The patrol is starting to power up their drives again. I think they may be returning to the beacon!"

"Scrap! That's way too soon. That wasn't even long enough to transfer the crew. What are they doing?"

"Captain, you need to leave now! Get back on board the ship!" I bit my lip as my mind raced.

Did I even have time to get back to the ship in the first place? My gut said no, I'd probably be caught in open space. Hailey and the ship would be blown out of space, and I would follow shortly afterward. System Authority patrols don't mess around when it comes to the System Beacon. Everybody uses them for any message that leaves the system and tampering with it slags all of them off.

"There's no time, Hailey. You need to jump out before they get close enough to detect you. We'll figure something out afterward."

"No! I'm not leaving my captain!"

"Hailey, we don't have time to argue. Jump back to Subspace, that's an order." My heart clenched at the sound of distress Hailey gave at my instructions.

"Rama, don't make me do this. Please, I can't leave you here!" Hailey sounded like she was on the verge of crying.

"Hey, I'll be fine ok? Now go, you're running out of time. We'll talk once I get the beacon breaker running and I have a link back to the ship." I kept my voice soft and gentle trying to calm her down. I guess I wasn't the only one who was getting attached quickly.

"Alright." I watched with relief as my HUD showed the ship fade out and my data connection cut.

Turning back to the console, I went back to work. Unclipping the hexagon-shaped disk from my hip, I attached the beacon breaker to the side of the core next to the console. As soon as it was attached one of the straight segments extended like a drawer, exposing a cable compartment.

I quickly identified the connection port on the beacon core and plugged the cable in. A progress bar appeared in front of me as the cable adapted to the Itzli hardware. I waited impatiently as it methodically tested every conduit and wire's function. In any other circumstance, I would have been amazed by this technology. Now all I could think about was that it was too damn slow!

Finally, the progress bar was filled, and the systems connected. After a few seconds, for startup and self-diagnostic, everything was operating smoothly. The beacon breaker was accessing the beacon's database and the graviton transceiver was communicating with the ship. I tied my communication system into the beacon breaker and used it to link my own communications back in.

"Hey, ya miss me?" All I heard back for several seconds was sniffling and a soft hiccup.

"Captain is an idiot." Well, I think this is the first time I've made her mad at me. Honestly speaking, I'm not enjoying the experience.

"Oof, now that's a bit harsh don't you think? It was a good plan, how was I supposed to know they'd come back so fast? Speaking of, what's that patrol doing anyway?"

"Hmph! Captain thinks he's so clever changing the subject." That's the problem with upsetting someone more clever than you, they see right through your tricks.

"Urk."

"If you must know, it looks like they came back to transmit the courier's data package."

"Wait, hold on. Are you saying that our plan got slagged because the mail can't be late? Really?"

"It appears that way, Captain."

"Well, that's just fantastic. Leave it to the Itzli to be properly bureaucratic about the damned mail of all things."

"How do you intend to escape Captain?"

"Not sure yet, I'm still thinking about it. Even if I felt like sitting out here long enough for the next courier ship, pulling the same trick twice is likely to make them suspicious. It's one thing for a single drive to have a problem that missed inspection. A second one? In the same location? The Itzli aren't stupid."

"Then what do you propose?"

"I don't know, I guess I could just fly away from the beacon far enough that you could pick up me without being detected?"

"Impossible, and I'm starting to believe I picked an idiot for a captain if you're even considering the idea. You have neither the air supply to reach such a suitable distance, the propulsion to escape the sun's gravity, or the shielding to protect against the solar radiation for such an extended period."

"Hey, I don't see you coming up with any ideas to get me out of here." I huffed, resisting the urge to pout.

Our argument was interrupted by the chime of the beacon breaker alerting us that it had finished searching the database and presented us with a list of files that matched our search criteria. Looking at the list of star maps and charts, an idea started to form in my mind. We had all the tools we needed all along, I just needed a little bit of unconventional thinking to come up with it.

"I got it. I know how to get me off of here. We're going to cause a solar flare."

"We're going to what?" Naturally, Hailey was skeptical of my genius plan.