I made my way down one of the ship’s corridors listening intently for any patrol coming nearer. Since infiltrating the ship, I’ve accessed the mainframe, which told me this ship had a skeleton crew and where the package had been stored, then accessed the security room, which had no guards in it, disabling the motion sensors, recordings, and allowing me to get through the vessel without using air vents to get everywhere. I had to commend the designer of this cruiser-class cargo ship for keeping the mainframe and security separate. It made this job ten percent harder…maybe six percent…okay, two. There hadn’t been a patrol in four hours, and I’d been there for six. The automated security turrets had no ammunition, and the five security droids still ran on plasma batteries. It truly did make me disappointed about the job.
I soon reached the ‘special’ cargo hold where the package had been stored. The airlock blast door had a type three holographic twenty-digit combination lock, the best security lock in the forty, or now forty-four, federation systems. It would take me ten minutes… maybe five. I flicked my right wrist, activating the cybernetic implants within my hand, and a screen appeared over my blue and yellow eyes. The screen wasn’t obvious to outside observers unless they looked closely.
I set a stopwatch to time myself as streams of twenty-digit numbers scrolled across my vision, vertically and horizontally. My fingers twitched as I typed in codes and bypassed the locking mechanism. The satisfying sound of the airlock unlocking made me smile, and I stopped the stopwatch with a quick mental command. Four minutes fifty-nine point five five-six seconds. A new record. In the center of the hold stood a pedestal with a small wooden box. I quickly checked for any other security I didn’t know about before going to the pedestal and opening the box.
A bigger smile spread across my face as I confirmed the box’s contents. Six uncut meteor diamonds, each two and a half to three inches in diameter, and completely pure. The owner of this cargo had hired me to steal it from him and bring them to a secondary location he owned for safekeeping. Then once he reports it stolen, he can receive insurance money and send me an excellent cut of it after things cool down. Plus, he promised one of the diamonds worth six million credits. At least, I think he promised one. All well. Mine now.
I placed the box inside a messenger bag, then re-adjusting my cropped brown leather jacket. I turned and went back to the airlock. I had one last thing to do on the ship and couldn’t leave before finishing the job. Walking silently on the metal floor, I made my way to the crew courters where most of the ship’s crew had been sleeping, which meant fifteen people are asleep for this size ship. I opened the airlock using the small keypad to the right of the door and looked inside, counting ten people, which, combined with the skeleton crew’s status, meant ten people are currently awake.
I shrugged, pulled a small tripwire charge out of my bag, placed it just outside the airlock at shin height, and activated its laser tripwire. I then closed the airlock door and hunted for the other ten crew. I only needed to kill one of them, the captain, a man with a crooked nose and no hair on his head. It would be best to kill the whole crew and destroy the ship. No loose ends, no trail, no evidence, no crime, and a lot of blood.
I soon found the mess hall in the cargo ship. Seven of the ten crew played cards within. I’m guessing they’re playing low-stakes Texas Holdom judging from the one-hundred credits worth of credit chips still on the table. I could buy a nice bottle of wine with that after I’m done here. I casually walked over to the four men and three women crew members. I didn’t bother identifying anything else about them. They’ll be dead soon after all.
Walking up behind one of the men, with nobody noticing. I peeked over his shoulder as a fresh pair of cards had been dealt. The man had two of hearts and eight of clubs, a terrible hand, then he closed his hands and had a pair of aces. I smirked mischievously, slowly clapped loudly, startling everyone at the table, and said, “Bravo, good game, guys, good game. By the way, he’s cheating.”
The man in front of me turned and exclaimed, “Who the hell are-” his last words died as I flicked my left wrist, which had a bracelet that could create a small plasma blade twelve inches long, a creation of my own genius design, and decapitated the man. I wasted no time or momentum as I drove the blade into the woman’s heart next to him, spun, and severed the jugular vein of the next person before they could run. The blade flickered out. Acting quickly, I pulled a snubbed pulse pistol I had hidden up my right sleeve and fired four times, killing three of the people as they stood to run, and the fourth, a man, got a plasma bolt in their left shoulder blade and he fell to the ground trying to scream, but nothing came out.
Aww. I hit his lung between his fourth and fifth rib. How fun! I walked around the table to the man and pulled the bracelet off my left wrist. It was fried, and I’ll need to fix it later. As I walked up to the man, I said, “Well, shit. It looks like I need more R-n-D on this thing,” then stepped on the spot my plasma bolt struck the man. The man let out another silent scream, and I bent over to look at the man’s unremarkable face, “Do you know why you can’t scream right now?” I asked. The man shook his head, fear in his eyes as he looked up at me, “It’s because that bolt punctured your lung, and it’s now filling with fluid and cannot hold oxygen. So, you’re basically drowning in your blood right now,” I gave him a kind smile as I looked into his dying eyes. Then shot him in the face reviling in the light leaving his eyes.
I stood still momentarily and listened for any sound that told me people had heard the commotion. Once I confirmed no one heard, I quickly gathered the credits and placed them in my bag. I then made my way out of the mess hall and headed to the engine room. Once there, I looked at the engine model, a type ninety-five fairy drive. The name sounded ridiculous, and the drives themselves tended to be temperamental.
“Shit!” I heard a woman curse as a wrench hit the ground.
I walked around to the side of the engine and saw a topless woman with her head up in the engine. She wore a cargo jumpsuit with the top pulled down and tied around her waist and a tight-fitting sports bra, and her glorious four-pack abs and breasts glistened with sweat as she worked the engine. The woman reached for the dropped wrench, saw my black cargo pants, and said, “Hey, could you give me that wrench?” I walked over, picked up the wrench, and handed it to her, “Thank you, I’ve been working on this coupling for hours now, and just as I was about to finish it, my wrench slipped, and I had to start all over again. I keep telling the captain we need to replace the engine with something new, like the NTR-202 drives, but no, it’s too expensive. Buying one of those drives would pay for itself within two runs with the cargo we usually hold.”
I nodded along as the woman went on a rant about engines, agreeing with every word. “Yeah, I know what you mean. The NTR-202 is an excellent engine. Not to mention using neutron energy is incredibly ingenious. I managed to snag the NTR-303, which is still a prototype but works wonders,” I said casually once the woman stopped for a breath.
The woman stopped what she had been doing, slowly slid out from under the engine, and looked up at me, “I have many questions. Who are you? How did you get here? Can I see the engine?”
Smiling, I answered the questions quickly, “Hi. I am Violet. I got here with my ship, and no.”
“Please, let me see the engine! I’ll do anything!”
I raised an eyebrow and smiled, “Anything?”
“Anything!”
“Even join my crew on my ship?”
“If you need an engineer? Yes.”
I studied her, actively taking in the woman’s face. She looked to be of Asian descent, not that it matters that much today, and her eyes shimmered a beautiful emerald green. She had several smudges of black grease on her face, and her raven black hair had been tied into a bun. I rubbed the back of my head, running my fingers through my long flaxen hair, then smiled and said, “Okay, we’ll see how you do,” the woman’s face lit up with glee, and I knocked her out with a left uppercut, dislocating her jaw. “Well, you can’t take a hit, sadly. That can be fixed eventually,” I mumbled, then picked the woman up and carried her out of the engine room.
I laid the woman down on the metal floor and returned to the engine room. I then pulled a thermal charge from one of my jacket pockets and planted it on the engine before leaving. I threw the woman over my shoulder and made my way to the bridge. Laying the woman down just outside the door, I placed an ear to it. As I listened, I heard a rhythmic banging and a woman moaning. You’ve got to be kidding me! He’s doing this now! As I listened and I began to open the airlock. It also had a type three holographic twenty-digit combination lock. It took six minutes to unlock this time since I kept getting distracted by the woman’s moans and terrible dirty talk.
The door opened, and the moaning naked woman sat on the holographic navigation table with the bold crooked-nosed captain pounding her with his dick and bare hairy ass facing me. When I opened the door, the naked woman’s screams of pleasure became crystal clear, “Oh, yes, give it to me, Pirate- hey! Who the fuck-”
I rolled my eyes as I gagged internally and shot the woman without hesitation, cutting her off, and the bolt went right between her eyes. The captain screamed the highest-pitched scream I had ever heard from a man, looking down at his crotch, then over his shoulder at me. “You make her call you Pirate lord, and you just came, didn’t you?” I asked, disgusted. The man nodded slowly, shame and fear on his face. I began to gag for real this time and said, “Your wife says hi,” then shot the captain in the head, closed the airlock door, locked it, and blasted the controls so nobody could get in… ever.
After taking a minute to mentally scrub my memories with bleach and fire in an effort to get rid of the memory, which didn’t work. I picked up the unconscious grease monkey I was being allowed to kidnap and returned to my ship. My ship had been docked on the port side of the cargo ship for hours, and nobody noticed. This crew almost deserves death if they are this incompetent. I boarded the small ship, only big enough for four people, with broadside neutron cannons and the NTR-303 engine. I had the fastest and deadliest ship in the galaxy, and nobody is allowed to touch it.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
I placed the unconscious woman in one of the four bunks and closed the airlock door. Then I detached from the cargo ship and flew safely away before activating the explosives I had placed on the ship. The cargo ship went up in a massive ball of fire and light, leaving only metal scraps behind. I smiled a little at the destruction and entered the coordinates for the rendezvous. Still trying to rid myself of the memory of that hairy ass.
***
While the ship’s nav computer plotted a route to the rendezvous at planet GC-22b, I returned to the main cabin and examined my unconscious guest. I then patted her down, looking for tracking devices, weapons, or contraband. Finding nothing, I sighed in disappointment. I had hoped there would be something interesting in her pockets. Getting up to find a stim pack from one of my compartments, I retrieved the stim and the injector, which looked like an injection gun. I inserted the hypodermic needle into the woman’s jugular vein and pulled the trigger, only injecting a small amount of the stim.
Then I tossed the used needle into a hidden disposal bin and felt the woman’s dislocated jaw. It had moved to the left, so I placed my hand on the woman’s left lower jaw, stabilized her head, and pushed. The jawbone relocated with a loud crack, and the woman’s eyes shot open as she made a muffled scream, with me holding her mouth shut. “Hey, you’re awake,” I said cheerfully as I knelt beside her, “How’s your jaw?”
The woman rubbed her jaw and said, “It’s okay. What happened?”
“Well, you offered to be my mechanic on my ship in exchange for seeing the NTR-303.”
“Oh, that’s right, the NTR-303! Can I see it now?!” She asked excitedly, her pain forgotten.
“Not so fast,” I said, holding up a hand, “Proper introductions are in order,” I stood and gave a small polite bow, my flaxen hair falling around my shoulders as I said, “I am Violet V. Vermillion, the Fifth Reaper of the galaxy. My friends call me Fives. And who might you be?”
The woman got out of the bunk and said, “I am Yang Chuuntiaan. Everyone calls me Yang.”
“Chuuntiaan,” I said a second later, “Doesn’t that mean spring? Yang Spring. I like it. But we’ll have to create a new name for you.”
“What, why?” Yang asked.
“Well, you died. At least that’s what people will say when they find the ship’s wreckage.”
“What wreckage?” Yang asked, a little horrified.
“Well, after I knocked you out. I killed the captain of the ship and the girl he was fucking at the time, and then I set off the explosives I planted on the engine and destroyed the ship with everyone on it,” I said matter of factly. Then noticed that Yang looked distraught, so I tried to cheer her up, “Congratulations! You’re dead! Time to start your new life as an assassin mechanic…person.” I don’t think it worked since Yang still didn’t look pleased. Then a beeping sound came from the cockpit, and I said, “Want to see how fast this ship goes?”
“Yes!” Yang said excitedly, forgetting that she had just been told she had technically died.
Entering the cockpit, I sat on the left seat while Yang sat on the right. I quickly examined the controls in front of me, flipping a few switches here and there, then placed my hands on the two joysticks connected to the seat. The left stick controlled speed, while the right controlled the ship’s roll, pitch, and yaw. An excited smile spread across my face as I slowly pushed the throttle forward, “I never get tired of seeing this. One moment we’re on one side of the galaxy, then,” the spots of light in the endless void that is space stretched and brightened, “you’re on the other.”
The throttle went as far forward as possible, and the ship blasted off into the distance, leaving behind a blue-white trail. The stars that had once looked stretched and thin now swirled and bent as the ship’s nav computer made impossibly sharp turns and mid-flight corrections to avoid unseen objects. Then it stopped, and I pulled back on the throttle till the ship rested in cruise.
Yang held on to the armrests of her seat for dear life and asked, “Where are we? How did the ship make all those turns?”
“We are at GC-22b, better known as…whatever the locals call it.”
“GC-22b! That’s two-thousand light-years away!”
“I know! The amount of energy one teaspoon of a neutron star could produce is incredible. And the navigation system is a CLC-314 best navigational computer in the galaxy.”
“CLC-314!!! I’ve wanted to get one forever!”
“They’re very nice. Now, I got to bring us in for a landing,” I said as I pushed the throttle forward and entered the planet’s atmosphere. The ship rattled and shook but entered the atmosphere just fine. The planet GC-22b had been classified as a dead world, just a hunk of rock floating in space with enough minerals to make it valuable to large corporations, but otherwise looked grey and bare.
I pulled a headset from a hidden compartment, placed it around my head, the microphone resting on my upper jaw bone, and said, “Tower delta bravo, this is raven echo requesting permission to land. Over.”
A few seconds later, I got a response, “This is tower delta bravo. We hear you loud and clear raven echo. You are clear to land on landing pad three-three, over.”
“Heard, landing pad three-three,” I said, accelerating the ship to bring the station within sight. The station had one large control tower, forty landing pads of varying sizes, thirty large landing pads for cargo ships on the surface, and ten mid-sized landing pads for passenger ships to transport workers or for business deals, such as the one I had come here to attend. The rest of the station hid underground, creating a network of hallways and mining tunnels I had memorized several days before.
I flew the ship into the hanger with a large three-three painted onto it and landed safely, shutting off the ship. “By the way,” Yang said, making me stop and listen, “What’s the name of your ship?” she asked.
Shutting down the ship’s systems, I said, “Mauler.”
“Oooh, cool name.”
“I know, right?!” I exclaimed as I got up and retrieved the bag of meteor diamonds.
“Can I come too?” Yang asked.
Looking her up and down, I answered, “Fine, but I would cover up if I were you,” Yang looked down at herself, realized that she had been topless the whole time, and quickly pulled on the top half of her jumpsuit. Her face turned a deep red. I chuckled, “All right, let’s go.”
Opening the airlock, a ramp came out of the bottom of it, leading down to the ground. A service droid at the bottom of the ramp waited for them to exit. It had a pill-like head and glowing eyes and wore a nice tuxedo. I didn’t know why, but I found the droid to be funny looking. Once at the bottom, the service droid bowed, “Greetings, I am W4-LT3R. You may call me Walter. I have been told to escort you to master Charles. Shall I lead the way?” the droid, Walter, asked.
“Yes, lead the way,” I said, then followed the droid. W4-L-whatever its name, led them down several long hallways before arriving at an elevator that opened upon approach. The droid pressed a button on the console in the elevator, and they began moving down into the facility. They stopped two floors down and went through another maze of hallways and corridors before arriving at another elevator, bringing them down three floors. They then went down one massive corridor with equally huge doors, which looked to be where the workers entered the mining tunnels. The odd thing that stuck out to me had been the workers. Something didn’t feel right to me. Nobody else was there.
The droid stopped at the door at the end of the corridor, turned, and said, “Please leave any weapons you may have on your person with me,” then it extended a hand. I glowered at the droid and handed it the snubbed pulse pistol. The droid continued to extend the hand. Groaning, I handed the droid fifteen knives, two pistols, three explosive charges, two grenades, and one electro-kyoketsu (a blade attached to a twenty-foot electro rope). The droid continued holding out its already full hands. Sighing, I reached into Yang’s boots, pulling out another knife. “Thank you. You may now see master Charles,” the droid said, placing the items into a compartment next to the door with a type five holographic forty-digit rolling encryption combination lock.
“When did you put a knife in my boot?!” Yang asked.
“When you were unconscious.”
“I could’ve been cut with that knife!”
“But you didn’t,” I countered as the door opened and followed the droid into the room.
“This is master-” the droid began, but I didn’t let it finish. The droid was too annoying and took my weapons away. I ran forward, grabbed its head from behind, jumped, and spun, twisting its head. I yanked the head over my shoulder as I came down, relieving it from the droid’s body. I held the droid’s head in one hand, revealing its spine and connecting circuitry.
I tossed it aside and looked up at the elderly gentleman sitting at a wide, oak desk with his hands interlaced, not even blinking at the destruction of his robot. Wooden furniture had become rare and expensive over time, so the room having wooden furniture was a show of wealth. I approached the desk without a care in the world, as though I hadn’t just ripped off the head of the robot with my bare hands and placed my bag on the desk.
“Was it necessary to destroy my butler?” the gentleman asked.
“Do you really think I would accept being unarmed in here with you? I’d rather keep things in my favor.”
The gentleman shrugged and said, “Fair enough,” He opened a drawer in his desk, pulled out a tungsten steel box, one foot by two feet, and opened it to reveal a mountain of credits, “one hundred million as discussed.”
I smiled and pulled out the box of diamonds revealing the five in exchange. “Looks like we have a deal,” I said, extending a hand for a handshake. The gentleman raised an eyebrow and cocked his head. I let out a small laugh, “Fair enough,” then took the case of credits.
The door behind me exploded, and a dozen heavily armed, armored men entered the room, yelling, “GET ON YOUR KNEES NOW! GET ON YOUR KNEES!”
“You cheeky little dick waffle. You set me up,” I said accusingly as Yang dropped to the ground without hesitation.
The gentleman shrugged, “You’re worth more than the diamonds.”
“GET ON YOUR KNEES!!”
I nodded begrudgingly, “I can respect that.”
The man yelling at me came up behind me and pressed the barrel of his gun to my head, and time slowed for a moment as one of my neural implants activated. Twelve officers, five on each side, one directly behind and another by the door. Three seconds till the one behind me pulls the trigger. Move now, starting with the left side of the room in three, two, and one.
I spun, elbowing the man behind me in his jaw, knocking him out, then going to the left side of the room with inhuman speed, pulling on one man’s gun and wrenching it from his hands. I spun behind him and fired at the men beside me as a storm of plasma bolts filled the room. The man I used as a shield didn’t last very long. I pulled the rifle’s trigger, activating the safety systems, and threw it at the men on the other side of the room. The rifle exploded in a shower of shrapnel and knocked over the other officers.
I lunged, grabbed Yang, and pulled her along, “What is happening!?!” Yang yelled.
“It was a setup to capture me!” I answered, running down the corridor as fast as possible, with Yang tailing along. They reached the elevator, which exploded, knocking Yang and I backward onto the ground. Then the massive airlock doors in the corridor opened, and an army of federal military officers filled the room.
A man in the back of the armed men spoke over a megaphone, “Stand down now, or we will shoot.”
Yang raised her hands, and I seethed with anger. This was their plan, corner me and capture or kill me. I’d kill every last one of them for less if it weren’t so well executed. But hey. I’d be fucked in the ass if they took me alive, and I yelled, “I will never surrender!” then men fired, and the storm of plasma bolts stuck Yang and I in the chest. Killing us both.
At least, that’s the official report.