“You got that Federation rust bucket up and running, hmm?” taunted Hiren, the Romulan pirate on communications said to the shuttle as it finally lifted off the surface of the planet.

“Yeah, yeah, you know Fed tech, not worth the replicator rations, am I right? Still, the Captain wants his toys. Say, got a private cell?”

“A… private…? What are you up to, Sellos?”

“Feds had some extra toys laying about on the surface. I’ll cut you into the deal if you help me hide them, whaddaya say?” Sellos asked. “I don’t need much, just a sealed room where nobody’s going to go poking about in for a few days.”

“Ah, Sellos, you almost make me wish you were born a Romulan. You have a transporter on that thing?”

“Of course.”

“Transmitting coordinates and codes now then… let us say eighty-twenty?”

“As long as I’m the eighty, Romulan scum.”

Hiren laughed. “Twenty percent for sitting and doing nothing but not turning you in? If it is not worth it, I’ll turn you in for more.”

“You do that, and you know you’ll get none of it.”

There was an uneasy silence for a moment, before Hiren pushed the button to complete the ‘transaction’.

“Pleasure doing business with you, Sellos. Hiren out.”

***

I flew the shuttle as poorly as I dared, right into the main hangar of the frigate’s docking bay. I was as careful as I could be with the tight transporter beam, dropping three packages into the indicated storage room before powering down most of the shuttle’s systems.

“Are you okay in there?” I sent to Ghorqan.

“It is dark, and close, but I am secure. Neither of the pirates have woken up.”

“Can you get out?” I asked him.

“I… think so. Yes.”

“Let me get into the ship’s systems… alright, you’re clear. Got your PADD, phaser and tricorder?”

“Affirmative.”

“Then head for Vizzok’s quarters, stay alert for route updates. Once there, we’ll regroup. ‘Sellos’ out.”

I cut off Ghorqan before he could start complaining or suggesting full frontal assaults. The Dagger’s security was more or less a ‘well, technically’ than a fact, so it hadn’t taken long at all to suborn more than a few of their systems, and now I was fully appearing as ‘Sellos’ whilst my klingon class-mate was ‘Vizzok’ to all the internal sensors that mattered. I was working on the rest, but needed a way in. I didn’t have control over everything, but I did have a lot of leeway, starting with the systems in the docking bay.

“Sellos to bridge,” I said, “can you send me a couple of engineering bods? Somebody not too fucking useless?”

“What is wrong, Sellos?” asked Captain Razzan, sounding profoundly bored. Their database told me a lot about everybody so I knew this was mostly an act. He was very curious.

“Need a couple extra hands on the isolinear circuits in here, at least if you want to salvage the Fed’s database before it goes tits up.”

I could hear a metaphorical pin drop in the silence that followed, before Razzan spoke up again. “T’lang, Orchan! Get down to the docking bay on the fucking double!”

I grinned. Now, the games could begin.

***

Razzan brought up his stolen PADD. He could’ve had a newer, better one replicated, but this one had belonged to an actual Starfleet officer. And now it was his.

“Ah, to be me…” he chuckled to himself. The latest crop of slaves had been loaded, processing could begin soon on the new lot. Maybe he could take one or two of the more docile ones before the mind wiping, it was always more fun that way. “Helm, take us back to Monus IV, pick up the rest of the slackers and anything important, and prepare to get the fuck out of this system. We’ll head to… I don’t know, how does Denebria sound? Ferengenar?”

“Anywhere, sir, but here. I don’t like messing with the Feds, they’re bad news.” Atan replied, the Orion helmsman grimacing as he punched in the orders to take the Dagger back to the fourth planet in the system.

Stolen novel; please report.

“Engage.”

Atan pushed the button. Atan… pushed the button. He pushed the damned button. He pushed a whole fucking lot of buttons and then slammed his fist against the console. “Get me engineering,” he said, finally.

“Engineering here, Orchan speaking, what can I do you for?”

“Orchan?” Razzan leaned forwards. “Thought you were helping Sellos?”

“Yup, got it sorted. Got everything we’re gonna get out of that shuttle, let me tell you. Now, what’s up, Cap’n?”

“I want the ship to go, you useless Tholian gutworm, and it isn’t going.”

“Ah, well, plasma conduit’s gone, sir.”

“Gone?”

“Kaput, dead, shuffled off this mortal coil, sir. It is an ex-conduit. It has, as they say, ceased to be.”

There was a moment of silence.

“Well!?” Razzan thundered.

“We-ell, I’ll replace it,” Orchan said. There was another moment of silence.

“And? Are you replacing it?”

“Oh, you meant now! No.”

Razzan, previously green, turned darker green with rage. “Why not!”

“We-ell, mostly because I’m talking to you, sir, but also because I’m making sure life-support isn’t going to fail too badly.”

“And why, pray tell, are you doing that?”

“Because if I don’t it might fail?” I, on the other end of the comm line as ‘Orchan’, could just see the veins throbbing in his head. How far could I push this before he got suspicious? “Are you ordering me to let life support fail and to change the plasma conduit so we can go to impulse?”

“Yes!”

“At once, sir!”

I shut down life support. Not everywhere, of course, but definitely on the bridge. Technically life support only failed there because I was pulling the chips out with my Mobility Platform, but swings and roundabouts… oops! Disruptor fire had me dodging for what scant cover there was. Some naughty little Orion scamp had been prowling around without their comm badge on. I don’t know why I was surprised. I needed a better grasp on the shitty sensors this rust bucket had.

“Captain! Intruders!” the little scamp said. Damn it. Plan D it was.

“Captain! Intruders! They’re pretending to be part of the crew!” I said, slamming myself into the newcomer’s face with the fury of a thousand suns. Or at least a half-brick in a sock. “That’s why the ship won’t go to impulse! They’ve been tinkering with life support too!”

Honesty really was the best policy, along with ‘do unto others before they do unto you’. I ‘looked’ down at the unconscious Orion pirate and smirked. Merry Christmas, now I have another klingon disruptor. Initiating a site-to-site transport via the shuttle’s emergency transporter, I delivered first my humanoid body and the guns she had, then secondly the extra guns from Orchan and T’Lang along with their unconscious bodies plus the rope used to tie them up to what had to be the slave pens.

“Miss Ausrich! Mister Jensen! Is everybody alright?” I asked, as the transport sequence finished.

“Chance! Oh my god, you’re safe! I was so worried!”

Miss Ausrich all but leaped at me to hug me. I’d appeared in her cage, my humanoid body waldo’d by my Shuttle core, not that the distinction mattered, to deliver the firearms for the adults in the party and two new occupants to the cage next door.

“I’m sorry, Miss, I had to change the manifest to hide me and Ghorqan! I know I should never, ever do that but it was an emergency!”

“We’ll worry about that later,” hissed Mister Jensen. “Where is the lad?”

“He’s in one of the pirate’s quarters! I had to get him out of trouble for when I took out the pirates Captain Razzan — he’s the Orion Pirate captain! — sent to the shuttle bay to help break the encryption on the Starfleet database in the shuttle and—”

“Shh, shh, it’s alright, you’re safe now. You did brilliantly. You got us these weapons, huh?” Miss Ausrich shared a Look between Mister Jensen.

“Uh huh! The shuttle transporter’s short range and limited capacity and if they pick up on it they can try to jam it, so I got you some backup whilst we evacuate everybody! Miss Ausrich, do you or Mister Jensen want to go first? Then you can start beaming over the kids.”

“What about you?”

“I’m fine, I’m currently running interference in Engineering and doing what I can to lockout the ship’s systems.”

“You’re what!?” shouted Mister Jensen, grabbing and rattling the cage bars.

“Ship Mind, remember,” I said, uncrossing my arms and tapping my head with a finger. I’m here, there and everywhere. I’m not even in this body but I’d rather not lose either core I have right now, so now please, Sirs, get going!”

“I’ll… I’ll go first!” Miss Ausrich said, and I immediately transported her back to the shuttle. “Ausrich here, I’ll start beaming the kids over. Stay safe, Shuttle out.”

Through the ship’s sensors, I saw the hotspots in the cells adjacent to this one diminish one by one. There were more than twenty eight. I grit my teeth.

“What is it?” Jensen asked.

For an answer, I kicked the cage open, then ripped open his and threw him the disruptor. “We weren’t their only victims. This is going to take longer than I expected, and I’m not letting them suffer just because my primary targets are my classmates.”

“Fu-udge,” said Mister Jensen, narrowing his eyes.

“Get the rest of the children out of their cages, I’m going to—”

“Halt, or you will die!” cried a voice, and I ducked and pushed Mister Jensen out the way as disruptor blasts sailed through the air right into where he’d been standing.

“Does nobody wear fucking communicator badges on this god damned ship!?” I swore, startling everybody long enough for me to pick up and throw some basic metal objects hard enough to dent hull plating at the two pirates who’d taken pot shots at me and Mister Jensen. “What else could go wrong?”

I cursed my loose lips. Brain a thousand times faster than a normal human’s and I could still invoke Murphy with the best of them.