There was a soft knock at the door of Ash's quarters aboard the Wraith and he rose from his half eaten lunch to see who it was.

"Hey Ash, things have been pretty hectic since we landed on this ship and Connor and I just wanted to stop by and thank you for what you did. I know you came to get Loukios but you could have turned us away when he wasn't there but you didn't. We've been working a few hours every night, cleaning, just to make a little cash. We got you this, it's from Earth." Liz said and handed him a book. "It's about a the second world war but it's fiction. Just a made up story."

"Thanks Elizabeth, that means a lot. I've been pretty bored at night so I'll start reading this. Thank you so much." Ash said and for some reason he felt tears welling up in his eyes. "How's the training coming along?"

Liz had been on bed rest for over a week but she was starting to train with Connor and the other raiders on boarding operations and close quarters tactics. Her face was still a mess of cuts and bruises but she was healing. She was still young.

"You can just call me Liz. Good so far. Connor is a week or so ahead of me so anything that I don't understand, he helps me with."

"How do you feel about working with pirates? Are they treating you well?" Ash asked in a whisper.

"They're the only humans out here. I don't really care that they're pirates, it doesn't seem like they had a choice. They're nice people, at least to me."

"Yeah I get that feeling too. I don't think they're bad people, they just didn't know how else to survive and they definitely have a grudge against the Callidus. The race that Loukios was. They were betrayed and left to die so humanity would start even slower out here." Ash said and pursed his lips. "I don't blame them."

"I have to get back to cleaning, I just wanted to bring you that book. We owe you our lives, thank you again."

"I wish I could have gotten you out sooner and without the running gun battle but I'm glad you made it. I'll see you again soon Liz." Ash said and gave her a fatherly hug. His eyes started to water again as he closed the door. He knew why this time though.

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"This right here is called a breaching pod. We have a very limited number of these and they are one-and-done. One use and then they become scrap metal to make the next one if we are able to recover it. They fire like an escape pod but they fly you into the danger instead of away from it. You will crash through the hull of your target vessel and then come out fighting.

This is not the ideal way to breach an enemy vessel but sometimes it's less risky than closing the distance and latching on. Normally there will only be two to three raiders in each pod and we fire several of them. Today there will be four just so everyone who has never used one can get the training this time. Connor, Elizabeth, Jimmy the retarded ape, and myself will breach the good for nothing Callidus merchant that we've been towing along for just this occasion.

Aboard that ship is an unknown number of defenders with their trainers cranked up to max. You do not want to get shot. We breach, we kill anyone who resists and we take the ship, is that clear?" Hamilton said raising his rifle to the sky.

"Yes sir!" came the chorus from the small raider training class. There were other trainees but they had already breached the wreck before so they were ready to eagerly watch the show on the several screens in the launch bay.

"Into the pod, now!" Hamilton yelled and they followed him inside. "Strap in and keep your head against the seat. It's a bitch when it hits. Launching in ten seconds."

Connor counted down in his head. 3-2-1. If he hadn't listened to Hamilton's direction, he would have slammed his helmeted head against the rest behind him but he was still feeling crushed for the first few moments. The screen in the bullet shaped pod showed their approach to be dead on target. They were speeding toward the slow moving merchant ship as it creeped along broadside to them.

"Here we go, hold on to your asses."

The pod slammed into the lightly armored hull and penetrated through to disgorge it's deadly pirate crew. The top opened up in every direction like a flowering bullet slug as it slid through the hull and left a hole big enough for two at a time to enter the ship. They did, and each man went to the opposite direction of the last and set up 360 degree coverage in seconds.

"Clear" Connor whispered on the internal comms network of their suits. The suit was like nothing that he had ever experienced before. It had a hud like a video game with all of the important information laid out perfectly so as not to obstruct his view. The bottom right showed how much ammunition he had both in his magazine and on his person, having been programmed before the mission with the correct numbers. On the top left was each person in his unit with a corresponding color. Green for healthy, yellow for wounded, and black for deceased along with a simple arrow indicator for their direction and range as well as ammo count.

Connor was designated to be the squad leader for the mission with Hamilton acting as a grunt but observing closely and giving vague advice.

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"It's getting hot in here." Hamilton whispered, hinting that Connor was taking too long to choose a direction.

He visualized the pod's impact and judged that they were in the rear of the ship. "We clear our path to the bridge and shut down the engines from there. We can't let them take us away from the fleet."

"Acknowledged" Hamilton said and he took point with Liz behind him and Jimmy the ape bringing up the rear. The squad leader of a pirate raiding team always stayed in the center for the most protection.

"There's several rooms in this hallway, your orders?" Hamilton said after moving forward for a few moments.

"We can't leave doors behind us without clearing them. Hamilton and Jimmy take the door on the left but don't breach, just cover while Liz and I breach the first door on the right. After we call clear and come back to cover, you breach yours."

"Roger." Hamilton said and raised his rifle to the door on the left as Jimmy took up a position just passed it and covered the hallway. "Hey Jimmy, what happens if someone steps out and I shoot them?"

"You'll hit me too. Sorry, coming back to you."

Connor checked the doorknob and found it locked. "Liz get a stun grenade ready. I'll kick the door and you chuck it in. Stay in cover."

"Okay, ready." She said and pulled the pin.

The makeshift replacement for the interior door shattered in, probably for the fifth time in it's short life as a training ship and gunfire erupted from inside. Liz threw her grenade hard and it bounced off of the nearest wall to land in the center of the room before exploding. Connor went in first to the left and called clear as Liz opened up on a man to the right as she entered the room.

"Clear." Liz said calmly and they checked the man before taking his weapon and turning off his vest as ordered in the briefing. He was officially dead and couldn't leave the room until the operation was over.

As they moved back to the hallway, Hamilton and Jimmy were already stacked on the next doorway with a stun grenade in hand.

"Go." Hamilton said quietly in the helmet comms and they executed the breach but nobody was inside. The Squad cleared the rest of the hallway, killing three defenders and taking one prisoner who was disarmed, restrained, and left in the hallway to be collected after it was safe to do so.

"The elevator is too dangerous, lets use the stairway." Connor said and pointed to the last door on the right. The stairway would lead up to the bridge door but the elevator would open to the bridge itself.

"We'll have to breach the door. We're out of stun grenades." Jimmy said before screaming into the mic causing the rest of the squad to react to the pain. He hadn't made it into the stairwell yet and was hit from behind.

"Shit! They're coming from the lower rear deck. We didn't clear it yet." Hamilton called out and leaned around the corner to return fire but took the full brunt of a simulated frag grenade and went down hard in the doorway.

"GO GO!" Connor yelled and pushed Liz gently in the back with one hand as he held his training rifle in the other, still pointed at the stairwell doorway. His chest tightened at the thought of being stuck in the flaming staircase at the Virginia Freight offices and he swore he could smell the smoke again. His breathing quickened and Liz could hear it coming through his comms microphone.

"Are you okay?" She asked, slightly out of breath herself from climbing up two sets of stairs to the doorway before the bridge.

"They're coming up behind us!" He yelled and opened fire blindly down the stairs to suppress his pursuers before they came into view.

"Stack up!" Liz said with a rare authority in her voice.

"Ok. I'm ok, go go go." Connor gasped. He could still smell the smoke but his eyes came into focus and she nodded. Liz kicked the door and it snapped open to a small hallway with the bridge to the right and a dead end to the left.

Connor slammed the door closed and kept his shoulder against it as Liz tried the lock on the bridge door. "It's locked. I don't think we can kick this one open. I'll have to hack it."

Liz had spent much of her recovery time working with the best hacker in the pirate fleet, Gloria Volkov, Daughter of Captain Grace. She ran simulation after simulation on a programmed tablet. Callidus locks were tough but she was getting better by the day.

"Hurry!" Connor said "I can hear footsteps."

Liz pulled out her hacking kit and opened up the door panel with a tiny screwdriver. There was a screen inside that looked like nonsense to Connor but she seemed to understand what it was saying.

"It wont take long. I just need to find a piece of the code and the rest will be fast."

"We don't have time. They're out there!" Connor hissed.

The door exploded inward from a breaching charge and Connor hit the opposite wall with the force of a head on car crash. Liz screamed and dropped her hacking kit but she couldn't get to her rifle in time as the ship's defenders rushed inside. They shot her as she clutched the stock and she went rigid with pain. Connor scrambled to his feet but was kicked in the chest by a huge man in red armor and he hit the wall a second time.

There were three of them, he could see as the smoke cleared, and two were standing over Liz laughing. Connor growled a curse but the big man punched him in the helmet before ripping it off.

"Relax man, it's just a training run." Connor said and groaned from the concussion of the hit. "Turn off her vest."

"What if I say no." The big man said with the same Russian accent of old Earth that Volkov had.

"Hamilton will have your ass for taking shit too far."

"Why? We don't need you. Nobody will care if you die here. He might get mad, but we'll just say something went wrong with your suit and there was a hull breach that wasn't sealed.

The big man reached down and covered Connor's mouth and nose with his palm while the other two held his arms down. He bucked and kicked at them as he struggled to draw in a breath.

"Maybe we do this to you while we have some fun with your girlie. We let you watch while you suffocate and come back and then suffocate again."

Connor ripped his right arm free and jammed his fingers into the big man's eyes. The feeling nearly made him vomit but he pressed forward. The man shrieked and drew back holding his face. The one still holding Connor's left arm reached for the rifle slung across his back but Connor reached through his open faceplate and jerked his helmet down to the ground as he rose to his feet.

"No no! Stop! It's just part of the test! They weren't really going to do it. We just had to see how much fight was really in you!" Hamilton yelled from the doorway. He rushed in and shut off Liz's vest and she gasped with relief.

"What?" Connor said, stunned.

"They weren't going to hurt you or Liz, they just had to make you think they would. It was planned. There's no way you could win this, that door is sealed. You were always going to get stuck here. You passed, you're one of us now."

Connor picked up his helmet and rifle and stormed into the stairway before yelling back "You're sick fucks, you know that?"

"We do, actually!" Hamilton called back.