Bailey paced around the holographic table in the middle of her virtual homepage. The plans of the Fidaela building, specifically the 89th floor, sat on it. Of course, it wasn’t the plans themselves that had the woman frustrated. No, that honour went to the Runaways. To be even more specific, the fact she had lifted this building plan off of their servers. She knew them well enough. They may try and put up a united front, but they were just a fractured bunch of rebels who didn’t want to play by any rules.

The raven haired woman stopped, snorting softly at herself. Hypocritical. That was exactly what she was too. At least she didn’t pretend to be doing something for a greater good, or some grand cause against the establishment. Bailey was far too petty to be fighting for ideals, and she knew and embraced it.

Still, the map was helpful, even if its presence was a risk. Corpos liked to put little bits of malware into their blueprints that could do many things to whoever was trying to use it to infiltrate them. Thankfully this was an off-the-grid coffin that she kept around as a secondary machine for exactly this purpose.

Despite her frustrations with the group, however, she knew that the perfect time for infiltration would be when the Runaways were already undergoing their operation. They were more interested in demolishing the massive server-rooms that were housed on the 87th and 88th floors, though apparently they had made some deviations from their original plans to make rescuing Kaela a secondary objective.

They wouldn’t find that poor girl, she’d be long gone by the time they reached the 89th floor. Bailey bit her lip. She knew all about Kaela’s past, through some snooping. She never had intended to get this close to her target. Just to extract her, get her somewhere safe, and let her free. Even if Fidaela did recapture her, it’d be an extensive delay and would see Yvea likely disappeared for failing to meet her deadlines. This wasn’t the first time she’d cocked up a project with a very personal basis, and Director Lori didn’t suffer fools.

However… She was breaking one of her own rules now. Never mix work and pleasure. But it was hard to ignore the pleasant feeling of the little trans doggirl wrapping her arms around Bailey’s body and nuzzling into her chest. The slight tickle of her ears against her nose.

Bailey cursed herself softly, looking over the plans she’d made again. She wasn’t sure what she’d do with Kaela after, but for now getting her out was priority number one. Ideally before they did any more surgery to her. She wouldn’t give Yvea the satisfaction of a job well-done.

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The Vagabond didn’t remain in port for long after arriving at Union Station. Just long enough for everyone to get their equipment upgraded with the bonus pay from the job, and refresh their coffins.

When we departed, it was a relatively quiet day on the server. Many people were still logged in, but a majority were doing remote work from inside the game, or going through course materials for school in much the same way. It was the perfect opportunity to slip the Vagabond out of the system unnoticed, and soon we were slipping into novaspace again to make our transit to the next destination.

Soren had gotten everyone together, letting us know about a personal job he was taking us on. Apparently, when Autumn had joined our crew she had told him about an outlying group of Delanno hackers that were allegedly datamining some of the gamecode ahead of the next major content update.

“So why are we getting involved?” Troy asked. The big man was someone I generally avoided when possible. He was always grumpy, and the way he looked dismissively at me anytime we were in the same room was uncomfortable.

“Saytence offers a reward for any player or group of players who assist in the prevention of code leaks from dataminers exactly like this.” Autumn was the one to reply, her voice flat and mechanical as usual. “It has been long controversial, but it is a good paying reward for those who undertake it.”

“Plus… Well, Lea and I have some past beef with this specific group. It was why when Autumn told us about them, we wanted to hunt them down. Get some revenge, plus a nice payday.” Soren continued off that. He was a masterful liar, I had to give him that. He could always come up with something relatively believable, and make it fit naturally into whatever hole he needed to.

“Are you certain Captain?” Alex asked next, a frown on his usually rather cheerful face. “The Vagabond is well enough equipped to defend herself, but she is not a combat vessel.”

“I’m certain.” Soren nodded at him, crossing his arms. The tiny captain continued, “I know it’s likely not going to be a walk in the park, but these are going to be relatively small ships with little arms beyond the defensive ones themselves.”

“Our E-defence is going to be an issue, though.” Lea nodded in agreement. “So likely the best way to deal with them is a ruse to allow us to board them.”

Troy’s eyebrows shot up at that, and the first grin I’d seen from the man crossed his face. “You wanna make a boarding action against them?”

“That’s the ideal. They’ll likely have some security forces, but if we can catch them off guard, we might be able to find out what they were digging for and get a better reward from the Devs.” Lea nodded, watching the big security officer shifting in excitement.

“Hell yeah. This is the kinda shit I signed up for.” He grumbled out happily, fingers twitching in excitement. “Sims are one thing, but going against players? That’s the goal.”

“Alex, you’ll be running the active interference against their e-warfare attempts.” Soren started to divide up roles for this upcoming assault. “Troy, you’ll be the point on our assault team. Once we board, you’ll be supported by Kaela and Nitra. Your goal will be to take the bridge before they can completely lock down everything. Lea will be leading a second team of herself, Autumn and Alex towards their data centres. Their goal is to prevent the physical destruction of as many datastores as they can manage. I’ll be coordinating efforts here on the ship, and watching out for inbound threats.”

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

There was a chorus of agreement from around the room, agreement shared between everyone. Something was bothering me though, and my eyes were locked onto Autumn. The information she’d provided was exactly along the lines of what Lea and Soren had agreed to with the weird gang Lea used to run with. It wasn’t entirely sitting right with me, how she could just offer that up so easily and confidently. She had just been a lower-level enforcer within Delanno, not someone who should be knowledgeable about semi-secret data mining operations under direct control from Delanno HQ.

On top of that, the way she spoke, the way she acted when she was roleplaying this AI character… Felt somewhat familiar, in an odd way. Like it was someone I should be able to recall the name of, but it was just off the tip of my tongue. My tail whacked the leg of my chair in irritation as I worked through my thought process. The emotional weight that felt lifted from me by Lea and Nitra was a massive relief, and I was starting to feel more like my normal self again. Or at least, my normal self within the game.

We broke off back to work after the meeting. I couldn’t shake the nagging feeling about Autumn, but for now I let it just simmer. There was no point in fully worrying about it at the moment. Soren had confirmed the information was true, and so we began to prepare our plan during the day-long voyage ahead of us.

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I let out a low groan, my body sore and tired as I slumped against the wall of the empty cargo bay. Running through combat drills with Nitra had been tiring enough on their own, before Troy had put himself in charge of ensuring that the two of us were up to his standards.

I wasn’t about to complain however. The practice and repetition of a task like this was something I had repeatedly pushed myself on over and over again in piloting sims. The chance to learn from an actual professional as I got the hang of using both my new knife and pistol was invaluable.

Nitra was faring better, if only by a little. She had her own unique style of fighting, using a pair of blades that extended from the jelly that made up most of her body. When crystallised, it let her fight flexibly, able to manipulate the length and style of the blades to whatever was needed in the moment. She seemed extremely capable in it too, able to shift how she fought to suit each weapon individually given the situation.

When asked, Nitra explained to Troy and I that she was part of a group of historians who tried to keep the old styles of fighting alive through practice of various different techniques and methods. It made enough sense, though it was niche enough that I had never heard of something like that before. It made me wonder what else there was to her, but I let it lay for now. We had other things to focus on, and I was more concerned about what Fidaela was doing to my real body.

Slowly I got to my feet as Troy approached where Nitra and I were downing some water and taking a breather. The large man was nodding approvingly.

“Good work today, both of you.” Troy said, crossing his arms. “When we breach tomorrow, I’m feeling confident about our chances. For now, go get some rest and recover. You’ll need to be at your peak during the assault.”

Nitra gave him a mock salute. “Got it, big guy. Haven’t been pushed this hard in a while.”

“Oh, Miss Kaela,” Troy turned to me, and my ears flicked back. What did he want now? We’d avoided each other for most of our time on the Vagabond, and now he’s talking to me all friendly like? “I’d like to talk to you for a minute privately.”

I shared a look with Nitra, who looked equally confused. “Uh… Sure? I guess that’s… Okay…”

“I’ll meet you back at your cabin, Kaela.” Nitra said, nodding at Troy. She didn’t seem to approve of the private chat, but was relenting anyways. “See you in the morning, big guy.”

When she left, Troy’s hardened stare turned towards me. He spoke first, not giving me a chance to start the conversation. “When the Captain told me you’d be joining the ship, he said you were a guy. Now, I ain’t got an issue with people who play as things they ain’t. None of my business.”

My tail stood stock still, ears still back as I looked up at him. The edge in his voice made me tense, and that pit of fear dropped in my stomach. Another person I couldn’t trust. Every time I started to place trust in someone, it was taken away immediately. I couldn’t trust him, he was going to give me hell just for playing as a girl in a game! It meant nothing! He didn’t know me, he didn’t-

“You feel more comfortable in that body than yer real one, I’m guessing?” He asked, raising an eyebrow at me. The tone wasn’t accusatory. It was gentle, more like someone commiserating about something familiar.

“I… What about it?” I asked, defensive. Every hair was still standing on end, and the tension that had been built up remained.

“I’m just asking.” Troy replied, grunting. “You… Remind me of my daughter.”

“Your… Daughter? What?” I blinked at him. Now I was utterly perplexed. What the hell was he getting at?

“She was, ah… Trans-gender?” Troy said, managing to split the word into two different parts as he guessed at it. “Born a guy, became a girl. And the way she acted when we played in VR together… The way her body moved and came alive… It’s like what I see in you. You are far more comfortable appearing in that body than someone who should be feeling all levels of disconnectedness with a body that ain’t theirs."

I looked at him for a long moment, the tension dropping out of my shoulders as I let out a long sigh. “Yeah. I… I think I’m that. I’ve… Never really had the words to figure out who I was, but when I started this character, I…”

“It just clicked, yea?” Troy asked, kneeling down. We were at eye level now, the man being an absolute giant in this game. “That’s how she described it to me.”

“Yeah.” I nodded again, swallowing back the tears and emotions that were starting to get to me. I wouldn’t have… Expected it, but Troy seemed to understand. Maybe not completely, but he seemed to get it. “What… What happened to her?”

It was the big marine’s turn to look away. I could see the glistening of tears in his eyes. “She’s comatose in a hospital.” Troy said, pain filling his voice. “We got into a mid-air collision on base with a staff-car, and she fell into a coma after that. She’s been stuck for nearly a year now.”

“Troy, I…” I started, but he put his hand up.

“I don’t want apologies or sympathy, Kaela.” Troy said sternly, though softened immediately after. “She’s getting the best care she can, and it’s being paid for out of the pocket of the officer whose car hit us. I just… Wish I could see her smile again.”

I nodded slowly, but Troy continued speaking. “I know we didn’t get off to a good start. An’ that’s my fault some. I didn’t want to see someone who was so alike my girl bein’ happy.”

“It’s… My fault too.” I replied, my voice barely above a whisper. “I made assumptions about you, and made up the worst-case scenario in my own head.”

“How about we try to put the past aside, and kick some ass tomorrow?” Troy asked, offering one of his massive, meaty hands.

I wiped the forming tears out of my eyes as a small smile crossed my face. I grabbed his hand, and shook it. “Let’s kick some ass, bossman.”