Breandan
06-23-2005, 11:52 PM
Kyle checked the straps that criss-crossed his boarding armor one last time as he listened to the sensor pings increase in frequency. The LIDAR pulses let him know that he was less than five thousand kilometers from the merchantman. He glanced at the chrono display in the holographic screen that hung suspended in the air before him.
“Strap up, you monkeys!” He called out over his shoulder to his boarding team, “Four-point-two clicks and closing! No screwing off, this time. Get in, grab the crates, get the hell out, got it?”
A stream of cursing, snide comments, and rude gestures accompanied the affirmation of his team. The merchantman was a big bastard, already the size and general shape of an elongated football in his viewscreen. Five kilometers in length, three-hundred-billion ton cargo capacity, she was a whale in space, and his small raider was less than a guppy by comparison. Of course, weight and size were irrelevant in space. Zero-gravity environments and AG fields rendered weight and inertia non-existent, thus it was mass and bulk that mattered the most.
Kyle skimmed over the manifest again. Mostly common goods, headed for the NAU colonies out on the Rim. One small section of the holo manifest was highlighted red, however. Rabidymite. Solid-form exotic matter, one of the very few substances known to man that could not be grown in a nano-vat, and the most valuable material in the universe. Rabidymite filled the same niche that gold, platinum, oil, and uranium had a few centuries previous, because it was the only fuel that could power the jump engines that allowed for hyperspace travel. Fourty-six crates of it, massing out five thousand square meters, worth millions.
Kyle rolled out of the captain’s chair onto the floor, looking over his crew. Reynolds, Takahashi, Nix, and Brenham were all human, scarred veterans of the trade. Ygraghun, “Iggy” as she was nicknamed, was a Garoudan mercenary, fierce lupine-looking predators much larger and stronger than humans. She was the “door”, the first entry man through the breach. Only Reynolds could match her strength, and that only through bio-enhancement, but her armored bulk would act as a shield for the rest to hide behind while they cleared any resistance. Sael the Teek was the tactical mind of the team, as well as the best netrunner Kyle had ever hired. Barely coming to hip-height on Kyle, the little reptilian looked almost silly in its armor and pulse pistol bandoliers. This mismatched band of rogues were his crew and family, though, and he trusted them- surly lot though they often were- and they trusted him.
“Ready?” Kyle asked, wincing inwardly as he braced for the barrage of smartassed comments he knew were coming.
“Actually, gov, I could do with a spot of sleep,” Reynolds chimed in, grinning.
“Can we order pizza first,” Nix asked, tossing her blue-and-purple hair over her armored shoulder, “You know I get cranky jackin’ a load on an empty stomach!”
Kyle smirked, kicked Reynolds in the butt, and headed through the hatch down to the breach hold.
“Takahashi,” he asked over his comms set, “They pinged us yet?”
“No, boss” came the reply from the cockpit where Takahashi had taken over control for the approach, “We’re still in their wake riding the EM waves, cloak’s holding, sensors are all on passive.”
“Let me know if they get our scent,” Kyle said as he sealed his helmet’s visor, “McAllister Station is only a ten minute jump from here, and ISP heat will be on us like white on rice if we get spotted.”
“So ka, boss,” came the reply, “I’ll make sure we are a shadow in the night.”
“Or a fart on the wind,” Brenham snickered as he hefted his pulse rifle and moved into position. Everyone else ignored his comments as usual.
The sleek, matte black raider slid between the twin jets of plasma from the archaic, but effective, fusion drives that loomed up on either side. As large as a football stadium each, the massive thrusters were fed by hydrogen ramscoops under the forward cowling of the merchantman and provided the enormous thrust needed to move through the system at half the speed of light. Matching relative speed, however, the merchantman seemed to almost stand still to the crew of the raider as it moved along the spine of the ship, less than a meter above the larger vessel’s hull. As they neared a spot a quarter of the way up the spine of the vessel, the dagger-like ship flipped tail-up so that its bow was aimed directly at the hull.
“Show time,” Kyle said, “Takahashi, burn it, and everyone get ready to move like your asses were on fire.”
“Burning,” Takahashi replied.
A slight rushing noise was heard in the breaching corridor as a rotating plasma cutter that ringed the boarding hatch burned through the outer hull of the merchantman. Soon, it had penetrated three meters through the outer armored hull into the interior, and the breaching module shot forward from the bow into the hole like a stinger. Upon contacting the inner hull, a second rotary plasma cutter mounted in the locking collar of the breaching module burned through into a corridor. A thunk was heard as the merchantman bled atmosphere explosively and blew the section out from the inner hull and past the breaching module. There was a clank and a hiss as the lock collar connected with the hole and sealed the breach.
“Here we go!” Kyle shouted as the door opened into the corridor. Concussion and ECM grenades launched automatically from launchers in the airlock into the corridor to confuse any defenders. Zero casualties was the preferred rule for Kyle’s crew. No bodies, lower bounty, that’s the way it worked. Most merchantmen used automated defenses and combat droids to save costs anyway.
As soon as the door was down, Iggy was through the door with the team in two-by-two formation right on her rear, using her armored tail as a handhold to get through the smoke and sensor interference. Once in the corridor, and verifying that there were no immediate threats, Kyle checked their location on his helmet’s HUD.
“One deck down. four hundred meters east-south-east, with bow as north. Reynolds, Nix- head straight for the package. Brenham, guard our entry point in case we have a hot evac. Iggy, Sael, you’re with me, we’re going for the cargo control deck.”
A chorus of “aye aye” greeted his orders. No fooling around while jacking a load, that was the rule. Plenty of time for horseplay later, when they were safe in an anonymous bar on an anonymous planet.
Iggy led the way as they headed for the command center for the cargo decks. Like all females of her species, Iggy was larger than Garoudan males, standing almost three meters tall, even hunched over slightly, and was broad-shouldered and broad-chested. Thus, she literally filled the corridor to such an extent that Kyle could not see past her to what lay beyond. Sael was not so hampered, being only a meter tall, and guided them by the landmarks he had memorized. Rounding a corner, they saw the first tell-tale sign that their boarding had been noticed. Two security droids at the far end of the corridor moved with lightning speed to cover positions in hatchways on either side of the hall and brought their weapons to bear.
“Halt and surrender,” one said in a surprisingly human voice, “Or we will use lethal force.”
“That so?” Iggy snarled, bringing her pulse rifle to her shoulder. The droids were faster, and sent two bursts into Iggy’s armored chest, but Iggy’s gun was much bigger, and a single blast from the particle beam weapon blew the head, and CPU, off of one of the droids. The other one, realizing it was outgunned, pulled a grenade from a panel in its leg and tried to throw it. A precise shot from Sael’s pulse pistol blew the wrist out, causing the droid’s hand to drop the grenade at its own feet. before it could do more than take a step, the grenade went off, blowing the hatchway open and destroying the security droid.
“Cheap-ass Conudyne sec-bots,” Kyle muttered as he kicked the head of the droid into the command center.
Beyond the door, in a room with floor-to-ceiling windows looking into the cavernous main cargo bay, a man lay on the floor, coughing and trying to climb back into the seat he had been forcibly removed from by the explosion. Iggy’s clawed foot on his chest pinned him back to the floor. Kyle stepped around the Garoudan mercenary and leaned down next to the man.
“Heya bub,” he said in his most jocular voice, “I don’t want anyone dead or badly roughed up, and I doubt you do either, so be a pal and give me the code for cargo module C-47A, will ya?”
“Kiss my ass, punk,” the man spat, his blue jumpsuit had no name tag or corporate logo, “That’s level six secured, you ain’t getting in there.”
“Really, now,” Kyle said with a grin, “That a fact? Sael!”
“On it,” the Teek said as he sat in the chair the cargo master had recently occupied. Sael punched in a series of codes on his VR Nexus emulator strapped to his left arm, bringing up a holographic reality around himself that represented the computer mainframe and databanks. Soon he was flying down corridors of electronic data crafted in imagery that resembled a glittering canyon between skyscraper-like towers that represented data modules.
“Damn classics-nuts,” Sael muttered, “The programmer set up a Tron Classic style-set matrix. Freakin’ primitive.”
“You can crack it, though, right?” Kyle asked.
“Yeah, no prob,” Sael replied as he zoomed up to a smaller tower representing the target node that held the security for the cargo module, “Just need to… HOLY SH…”
Sael was jolted out of the chair by a burst of static that crackled along his body like witch fire before he could finish the imprecation.
“Sael?!” Kyle called out with concern.
“Damn!” Sael said, settling back into the chair, “That was a level three biofeedback security program, and that was just the entry perimeter for the node. Bastards like protecting their packages.”
“You can still crack it, though, right?”
“Yeah, it’ll just take me a minute.”
“We have six left,” Takahashi announced over their comms net, “Alert went out just shy of four minutes ago.”
“Thanks, Tak,” Reynolds said, “We’re waiting outside the door, gov, whenever you’re ready.”
Sael charged at the node, only to bank to the side as an object began forming up in front of it. The glittering black orb seemed to emerge from the substance of the node itself, and began shaping itself into an inverted U-shaped aircraft of some sort.
“Dammit, the node’s frosty,” Sael muttered, “Intrusion Countermeasures are not something I counted on. Going to fox it, this will take a sec.”
Teek rapidly punched in a series of commands into a holographic keypad, and a mirror image of him formed in the VR world, speeding off rapidly into the distance. The strange aircraft sped off after the ghost-image, bringing its downward-pointing arms together and slamming them into the ground in an attempt to crush the decoy-Sael into oblivion.
“IC is gone for a bit,” he announced, “Now for the code.”
Sael tapped the surface of the node, bringing a display of encrypted data streams into view before him. He reached into the data stream and tapped certain key glyphs and letters, and the stream slowly began to form a sixteen digit alphanumeric sequence.
“Got the code,” he announced over the comms net, “A6637ST994-D, hit it and grab the package, cause I am seeing a lot of activity on their net. Looks like a squad of droids headed our way, along with security teams.”
“We’re in!” came Nix’ triumphant voice.
Kyle tranqued the cargo master and the three of them jogged down the hall to the cargo module. Joining Nix and Reynolds in the hold, they were puzzled to see only one crate in the center of the room.
“Why do I have a bad feeling about this?” Kyle said, drawing both of his pulse pistols.
“Because, gov,” Reynolds said, “This run’s been too bloody easy thus far. Only makes sense we’d get buggered in the end.”
“Nix, check the crate,” Kyle said.
“Biosign inside,” she replied, “One only, unknown signature. Seems to be a stasis chamber.”
“Dammit,” Kyle muttered, “Alright, we vote- take this thing with, or bug out and run for it?”
“I vote we leave now,” Takahashi said, “There is no profit in this.”
“Nah,” Reynolds laughed, “This kind of security, this kind of cover story, it HAS to be worth something. I say we take it.”
“Ditto,” said Sael, “I didn’t almost get my tail fried for nothing.”
“Nix?” Kyle asked.
“I say we take it, has to be worth something to someone, and that someone will pay a lot to get it back.”
“Take” was all Iggy had to say on the matter.
“It’s settled then,” Kyle said, attaching the lift generator handle to the crate and lifting it off the ground on the AG field, “Whatever it is, it’s worth something, we take it. Besides, what’s the worst that could happen?”
The answer to that question would reveal itself soon enough, but as the raiders fought their way back to their ship and fled the ISP patrol ships, their minds were on profit, not the mysteries behind the cargo they had stolen.
“Strap up, you monkeys!” He called out over his shoulder to his boarding team, “Four-point-two clicks and closing! No screwing off, this time. Get in, grab the crates, get the hell out, got it?”
A stream of cursing, snide comments, and rude gestures accompanied the affirmation of his team. The merchantman was a big bastard, already the size and general shape of an elongated football in his viewscreen. Five kilometers in length, three-hundred-billion ton cargo capacity, she was a whale in space, and his small raider was less than a guppy by comparison. Of course, weight and size were irrelevant in space. Zero-gravity environments and AG fields rendered weight and inertia non-existent, thus it was mass and bulk that mattered the most.
Kyle skimmed over the manifest again. Mostly common goods, headed for the NAU colonies out on the Rim. One small section of the holo manifest was highlighted red, however. Rabidymite. Solid-form exotic matter, one of the very few substances known to man that could not be grown in a nano-vat, and the most valuable material in the universe. Rabidymite filled the same niche that gold, platinum, oil, and uranium had a few centuries previous, because it was the only fuel that could power the jump engines that allowed for hyperspace travel. Fourty-six crates of it, massing out five thousand square meters, worth millions.
Kyle rolled out of the captain’s chair onto the floor, looking over his crew. Reynolds, Takahashi, Nix, and Brenham were all human, scarred veterans of the trade. Ygraghun, “Iggy” as she was nicknamed, was a Garoudan mercenary, fierce lupine-looking predators much larger and stronger than humans. She was the “door”, the first entry man through the breach. Only Reynolds could match her strength, and that only through bio-enhancement, but her armored bulk would act as a shield for the rest to hide behind while they cleared any resistance. Sael the Teek was the tactical mind of the team, as well as the best netrunner Kyle had ever hired. Barely coming to hip-height on Kyle, the little reptilian looked almost silly in its armor and pulse pistol bandoliers. This mismatched band of rogues were his crew and family, though, and he trusted them- surly lot though they often were- and they trusted him.
“Ready?” Kyle asked, wincing inwardly as he braced for the barrage of smartassed comments he knew were coming.
“Actually, gov, I could do with a spot of sleep,” Reynolds chimed in, grinning.
“Can we order pizza first,” Nix asked, tossing her blue-and-purple hair over her armored shoulder, “You know I get cranky jackin’ a load on an empty stomach!”
Kyle smirked, kicked Reynolds in the butt, and headed through the hatch down to the breach hold.
“Takahashi,” he asked over his comms set, “They pinged us yet?”
“No, boss” came the reply from the cockpit where Takahashi had taken over control for the approach, “We’re still in their wake riding the EM waves, cloak’s holding, sensors are all on passive.”
“Let me know if they get our scent,” Kyle said as he sealed his helmet’s visor, “McAllister Station is only a ten minute jump from here, and ISP heat will be on us like white on rice if we get spotted.”
“So ka, boss,” came the reply, “I’ll make sure we are a shadow in the night.”
“Or a fart on the wind,” Brenham snickered as he hefted his pulse rifle and moved into position. Everyone else ignored his comments as usual.
The sleek, matte black raider slid between the twin jets of plasma from the archaic, but effective, fusion drives that loomed up on either side. As large as a football stadium each, the massive thrusters were fed by hydrogen ramscoops under the forward cowling of the merchantman and provided the enormous thrust needed to move through the system at half the speed of light. Matching relative speed, however, the merchantman seemed to almost stand still to the crew of the raider as it moved along the spine of the ship, less than a meter above the larger vessel’s hull. As they neared a spot a quarter of the way up the spine of the vessel, the dagger-like ship flipped tail-up so that its bow was aimed directly at the hull.
“Show time,” Kyle said, “Takahashi, burn it, and everyone get ready to move like your asses were on fire.”
“Burning,” Takahashi replied.
A slight rushing noise was heard in the breaching corridor as a rotating plasma cutter that ringed the boarding hatch burned through the outer hull of the merchantman. Soon, it had penetrated three meters through the outer armored hull into the interior, and the breaching module shot forward from the bow into the hole like a stinger. Upon contacting the inner hull, a second rotary plasma cutter mounted in the locking collar of the breaching module burned through into a corridor. A thunk was heard as the merchantman bled atmosphere explosively and blew the section out from the inner hull and past the breaching module. There was a clank and a hiss as the lock collar connected with the hole and sealed the breach.
“Here we go!” Kyle shouted as the door opened into the corridor. Concussion and ECM grenades launched automatically from launchers in the airlock into the corridor to confuse any defenders. Zero casualties was the preferred rule for Kyle’s crew. No bodies, lower bounty, that’s the way it worked. Most merchantmen used automated defenses and combat droids to save costs anyway.
As soon as the door was down, Iggy was through the door with the team in two-by-two formation right on her rear, using her armored tail as a handhold to get through the smoke and sensor interference. Once in the corridor, and verifying that there were no immediate threats, Kyle checked their location on his helmet’s HUD.
“One deck down. four hundred meters east-south-east, with bow as north. Reynolds, Nix- head straight for the package. Brenham, guard our entry point in case we have a hot evac. Iggy, Sael, you’re with me, we’re going for the cargo control deck.”
A chorus of “aye aye” greeted his orders. No fooling around while jacking a load, that was the rule. Plenty of time for horseplay later, when they were safe in an anonymous bar on an anonymous planet.
Iggy led the way as they headed for the command center for the cargo decks. Like all females of her species, Iggy was larger than Garoudan males, standing almost three meters tall, even hunched over slightly, and was broad-shouldered and broad-chested. Thus, she literally filled the corridor to such an extent that Kyle could not see past her to what lay beyond. Sael was not so hampered, being only a meter tall, and guided them by the landmarks he had memorized. Rounding a corner, they saw the first tell-tale sign that their boarding had been noticed. Two security droids at the far end of the corridor moved with lightning speed to cover positions in hatchways on either side of the hall and brought their weapons to bear.
“Halt and surrender,” one said in a surprisingly human voice, “Or we will use lethal force.”
“That so?” Iggy snarled, bringing her pulse rifle to her shoulder. The droids were faster, and sent two bursts into Iggy’s armored chest, but Iggy’s gun was much bigger, and a single blast from the particle beam weapon blew the head, and CPU, off of one of the droids. The other one, realizing it was outgunned, pulled a grenade from a panel in its leg and tried to throw it. A precise shot from Sael’s pulse pistol blew the wrist out, causing the droid’s hand to drop the grenade at its own feet. before it could do more than take a step, the grenade went off, blowing the hatchway open and destroying the security droid.
“Cheap-ass Conudyne sec-bots,” Kyle muttered as he kicked the head of the droid into the command center.
Beyond the door, in a room with floor-to-ceiling windows looking into the cavernous main cargo bay, a man lay on the floor, coughing and trying to climb back into the seat he had been forcibly removed from by the explosion. Iggy’s clawed foot on his chest pinned him back to the floor. Kyle stepped around the Garoudan mercenary and leaned down next to the man.
“Heya bub,” he said in his most jocular voice, “I don’t want anyone dead or badly roughed up, and I doubt you do either, so be a pal and give me the code for cargo module C-47A, will ya?”
“Kiss my ass, punk,” the man spat, his blue jumpsuit had no name tag or corporate logo, “That’s level six secured, you ain’t getting in there.”
“Really, now,” Kyle said with a grin, “That a fact? Sael!”
“On it,” the Teek said as he sat in the chair the cargo master had recently occupied. Sael punched in a series of codes on his VR Nexus emulator strapped to his left arm, bringing up a holographic reality around himself that represented the computer mainframe and databanks. Soon he was flying down corridors of electronic data crafted in imagery that resembled a glittering canyon between skyscraper-like towers that represented data modules.
“Damn classics-nuts,” Sael muttered, “The programmer set up a Tron Classic style-set matrix. Freakin’ primitive.”
“You can crack it, though, right?” Kyle asked.
“Yeah, no prob,” Sael replied as he zoomed up to a smaller tower representing the target node that held the security for the cargo module, “Just need to… HOLY SH…”
Sael was jolted out of the chair by a burst of static that crackled along his body like witch fire before he could finish the imprecation.
“Sael?!” Kyle called out with concern.
“Damn!” Sael said, settling back into the chair, “That was a level three biofeedback security program, and that was just the entry perimeter for the node. Bastards like protecting their packages.”
“You can still crack it, though, right?”
“Yeah, it’ll just take me a minute.”
“We have six left,” Takahashi announced over their comms net, “Alert went out just shy of four minutes ago.”
“Thanks, Tak,” Reynolds said, “We’re waiting outside the door, gov, whenever you’re ready.”
Sael charged at the node, only to bank to the side as an object began forming up in front of it. The glittering black orb seemed to emerge from the substance of the node itself, and began shaping itself into an inverted U-shaped aircraft of some sort.
“Dammit, the node’s frosty,” Sael muttered, “Intrusion Countermeasures are not something I counted on. Going to fox it, this will take a sec.”
Teek rapidly punched in a series of commands into a holographic keypad, and a mirror image of him formed in the VR world, speeding off rapidly into the distance. The strange aircraft sped off after the ghost-image, bringing its downward-pointing arms together and slamming them into the ground in an attempt to crush the decoy-Sael into oblivion.
“IC is gone for a bit,” he announced, “Now for the code.”
Sael tapped the surface of the node, bringing a display of encrypted data streams into view before him. He reached into the data stream and tapped certain key glyphs and letters, and the stream slowly began to form a sixteen digit alphanumeric sequence.
“Got the code,” he announced over the comms net, “A6637ST994-D, hit it and grab the package, cause I am seeing a lot of activity on their net. Looks like a squad of droids headed our way, along with security teams.”
“We’re in!” came Nix’ triumphant voice.
Kyle tranqued the cargo master and the three of them jogged down the hall to the cargo module. Joining Nix and Reynolds in the hold, they were puzzled to see only one crate in the center of the room.
“Why do I have a bad feeling about this?” Kyle said, drawing both of his pulse pistols.
“Because, gov,” Reynolds said, “This run’s been too bloody easy thus far. Only makes sense we’d get buggered in the end.”
“Nix, check the crate,” Kyle said.
“Biosign inside,” she replied, “One only, unknown signature. Seems to be a stasis chamber.”
“Dammit,” Kyle muttered, “Alright, we vote- take this thing with, or bug out and run for it?”
“I vote we leave now,” Takahashi said, “There is no profit in this.”
“Nah,” Reynolds laughed, “This kind of security, this kind of cover story, it HAS to be worth something. I say we take it.”
“Ditto,” said Sael, “I didn’t almost get my tail fried for nothing.”
“Nix?” Kyle asked.
“I say we take it, has to be worth something to someone, and that someone will pay a lot to get it back.”
“Take” was all Iggy had to say on the matter.
“It’s settled then,” Kyle said, attaching the lift generator handle to the crate and lifting it off the ground on the AG field, “Whatever it is, it’s worth something, we take it. Besides, what’s the worst that could happen?”
The answer to that question would reveal itself soon enough, but as the raiders fought their way back to their ship and fled the ISP patrol ships, their minds were on profit, not the mysteries behind the cargo they had stolen.