《Intergalactic》


 Rusty Bolt

    Bolting out from behind the asteroid, the Rusty Bolt fired its engines up to maximum burn. Its patched-up hull answered with a groaning protest. The hyperspace sensors shrieked to life. Their target, a Xylar freighter, was invisible in 3D space, but they had picked it up easily.


    ?Game is on!¡° Red Rodriguez barked at the command console and to no one in particular, her voice laced with adrenaline and a hint of manic glee. Besides her, Twitch was piloting the ship with precision and speed, his fingers dancing across the controls in a blur of nervous energy while he was muttering a torrent of calculations and navigation details under his breath. This was his world and he was immersed in it entirely, nearly ignoring Captain Red. The Rusty Bolt jolted violently as the lateral accelerators kicked in and pushed it the final way out, into the clear.


    A half deck below them, at the engineering station, Grubs was wrestling with the ship¡¯s ancient systems. Sparks flew from his cybernetic arm as he jury-rigged a failing power conduit. The Rusty Bolt had seen better days and a full burn was stressing it to its limits, with all the repairs and patchwork straining under the g-forces. A symphony of mechanical groans, the whirring of Grubs'' cybernetics, and the rhythmic thrum of the engines accompanied the acceleration that stolen alien dampers could only partially compensate.


    But even though it looked nothing like the sleek ships of most alien races, the Rusty Bolt was fast and maneuverable. A marvel of salvaged technology and human ingenuity, and thanks to its small size, a single hyperdrive engine could enclose it in a warp bubble that would keep up with most freighters and civilian ships in the galaxy. Though only for a short time.


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    ?Damn space whale is in a hurry!¡°, Red snapped as the sensors locked on, ?Dang she¡¯s fast!¡°


    Twitch picked up the target info without a word, but his eyebrows raised that small bit that showed his surprise. He quickly adjusted the course of the ship, and a whiff of burnt engine oil and ozone was added to the otherwise stale and metallic smell inside the Rusty Bolt. The engines were running at maximum power, and were holding together by whatever Grubs had patched them up with after the last run.


    Red¡¯s eyes were glued to the command console while she gritted her teeth. She had spent days planning this heist. But the Xylar freighter was burning through space in its warp bubble and there was no time for regrets.


    ?C-Factor 27¡°, Red shouted at Twitch for no reason as he had the same reading on his screen the same moment, ?What¡¯s their cargo that they¡¯re bubbling like that?¡°


    Twitch was adjusting the intercept course. He was mumbling conversation factors now. C-27 meant over seven hundred times the speed of light. They had expected the freighter to travel somewhere around 20, at four hundred c.


    Red pointed to the holographic display of the solar system: ?We need to slingshot around that gas giant. Set us up.¡°


    A bead of sweat trickled down Twitch¡¯s temple, caused by both the overheating engines and the risk of the maneuver. ?Got it, captain. If the engine doesn¡¯t fall apart halfway through, we¡¯ll catch her.¡°


    ?Today¡¯s a lucky day, we got this.¡° Red retorted, a steely glint in her eye. ?Grubs! Make those engines work, we need to get warp-ready right now!¡°

 Intercept

    The holographic display at the captain¡¯s station showed Red the grim truth, its luminescent glow reflected in her crimson eye, painting a grim picture across her face. The freighter was still well outside the solar system of the red dwarf whose asteroid belt the crew had been using for cover, but they needed time to get into hyperspace and then to match its speed, which was almost twice what they had anticipated.


    The ship AI was busy running through simulations and doing multi-dimensional calculations, because the Xylar freighter was at the moment traveling through higher-dimensional space.


    Red was impatiently watching the simulation runs and projections it showed. ?Damn seven-dimensionals¡°, she grumbled, ?making a girl''s job a nightmare.¡°


    ?Could¡¯ve picked lower-dimensional aliens, capt¡¯n.¡°, Grubs responded from below, ?Fiver or Sixers.¡°


    Red nodded: ?Sure, but the Xylars have some of the best hyperdrives. And for them, building new ones is so easy that it¡¯s not worth hunting a few pirates just because we steal one or two from a freighter that has eight or more of them.¡°


    ?I know¡°, Grubs returned to attention to the engines, ?wouldn¡¯t want to provoke a full-blown punitive expedition.¡°


    First time estimates appeared in the holographic display. Six minutes until they could create a warp bubble. One minute after that, the Xylars would enter the system¡¯s heliosphere.


    Twitch was mumbling changes to their approach to himself: ?Need that hyperspace gravity assist to get enough C-Factors quickly enough. The Xylars will pass well above the ecliptic plane, in order to avoid the deeper parts of the star¡¯s gravity well. Correct trajectory upwards via slingshot to save the engines for acceleration.¡°


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    Red was rethinking their heist. Her original estimate for the time the freighter would be within the heliosphere of the system, the best time for them to pull off the heist, had been 8 or 9 minutes. But at the higher speed they saw now, taking into account the power function of C-Factors, that time was almost half her estimate. ?We may have to chase the freighter into interstellar space.¡°, she said, loud enough for the others to hear, but mostly to herself.


    ?Old Rusty won¡¯t like that.¡°, Grubs answered in the same way without addressing anyone in particular, ?Not one bit.¡°


    ?I know.¡°, Red replied. She had become calm now that the tension was on. ?We won¡¯t get that nice, clean intercept, match speed, get in and get out. It¡¯ll be a chase.¡°


    Not their most favorite way of doing things, but beggars can¡¯t be choosers.


    The holographic display settled on a solution that Twitch and the AI had agreed upon. They would reach the gas giant almost the exact moment the freighter came into the system. Even with the gravity assist, they would catch up to it barely before it left the system a few minutes later. Their heist would complete, if at all, well outside the heliosphere, in interstellar space. It would be a rocky ride.


    One minute later, the viewport went dark as the Rusty Bolt slipped into its warp bubble and the roar of the sub-light-speed engines was replaced by the alien whir of the hyperdrive. During faster-than-light travel, the world was a very different place, and navigation was entirely by sensors and computer predictions.

 Dimensional Shears

    The clock ticked down as the Rusty Bolt accelerated through hyperspace, hurtling towards the gas giant, then around it. Gravity still exists in hyperspace, and Twitch was at this point navigating by the bends and ripples in space that it caused.


    He was mumbling navigation data to himself again, barely audible except for the ?slingshot complete¡° acknowledgment that came eventually. As the gas giant disappeared behind them, visible only on the holographic display, their hunt for the freighter was on.


    ?I¡¯ll never get over this.¡°, Red muttered to herself, as there was nothing for her to do in this phase of the operation, ?How everything just disappears into a void. Sure, makes sense with space bent around us in the warp bubble. I get it as a theory. But that we could fly right through that planet is something I just don¡¯t get.¡°


    Her attention snapped back as the rendezvous came closer. They were coming up behind and underneath the freighter, who no doubt had them on its sensors by now and since their transition into faster-than-light travel knew for sure that they were not some asteroid or space anomaly. There were legends about naturally occurring FTL objects, but to the best of Red¡¯s knowledge, no human had actually ever seen one.


    The minutes felt like hours as the Rusty Bolt inched closer and closer, Twitch matching their speed to the freighter as they came near.


    ?No comms, no evasion.¡°, the pilot stated the facts calmly, ?They don¡¯t know who we are.¡°


    ?Guess not.¡°, Grubs added from below, ?We¡¯re a good distance from normal human space.¡°


    Twitch cut in: ?Heliosphere shockwave in under two minutes. Captain, don¡¯t think we can make it before. Wait until interstellar?¡°


    Red thought for a few seconds. At their current speed, the transition to interstellar space that would have been reasonably smooth in normal space would indeed be more sudden and jolt them around. If they had their teeth in the freighter at that moment, it could damage their goods or even the ship.


    ?Damn it, yes. We wait. Going too deep into the void for a heist unnerves me, but it¡¯s too risky otherwise. You boys know I like risk, but not stupid risk.¡°


    Twitch held the Rusty Bolt steady at the underside of the Xylar freighter. The alien vessel filled the entire holographic display. The Rusty Bolt, with all its glorious hundred meters or so in length, seemed little more than a dinghy bobbing next to a leviathan.


    ?Shockwave in 10¡­ 5¡­ now!¡°, Twitch called out, and the crew of three held on to their chairs. They hit the transition between the unnamed solar system and interstellar space and were through it in a few seconds. Then they immediately went into action.


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    Red gritted her teeth again. ?Grubs, push it.¡°


    The ship mechanic had prepared the dimensional shears while they were chasing the freighter and had only waited for the go. Grubs switched the device on, diverting power to it. The lights flickered under the strain of energy coursing into a machine the best human scientists were still trying to unravel. The markings on it were in the language of some alien race Grubs knew nothing about, and he had glued labels in English over them wherever he understood the function of a switch or valve or button - which was less than half of them.


    ?One warp distortion coming right up. It¡¯s gonna be rough.¡°, he calmly informed the others.


    Red slammed her bionic eye shut, focusing. ?Alright, listen up. Once we''re in the sequence, ten seconds, tops.  Grubs, prep the retraction beam. Twitch, get us out of there clean, no matter what.¡°


    ?Ten seconds, Captain!¡°, Twitch announced, his voice tight.


    The ship shuddered as it entered a swirling vortex of shimmering colors. The warp bubbles of the two ships merged as the secret weapon of human piracy engaged. A searing blue light erupted from the device, momentarily enveloping the bridge.


    Red, heart pounding, activated the sequence. The dimensional shears went to work, opening a rift into the higher dimensional space that most of the Xylar freighter existed in.


    ?Five seconds!¡°, Twitch yelled.


    The viewport came to life with swirling colors, the result of the hole into 3D space they were creating. Just energy transitions turned into photons.


    ?Two seconds!¡°, Twitch¡¯s voice crackled with urgency.


    The blue light faded, and the viewport returned to the perfect black of hyperspace. The giant freighter shuddered in the holographic display, as its pilot - AI or Xylar - corrected for the sudden change it had experienced.


    ?Drop us!¡°, Red shouted and Twitch hit the hyperdrive controls. The Rusty Bolt lurched violently, tumbling out of hyperspace with its warp bubble collapsing. Alarms blared as the ship was spinning wildly.


    ?Hold on tight, everyone!¡°, Twitch wrestled with the controls, sweat streaming down his face. He brought the ship under control, stopped the spin and started the braking sequence.


    Red took a deep breath, adrenaline slowly ebbing away. Her gaze went to the holographic display and found the small dot in the distance that was their loot. Eight hundred-thirty light seconds the display indicated as their distance. Not bad. It would take them two hours to get there with the sub-light engines, and if Grubs¡¯s frantic activity half a deck down was any indication, they would need that time for repairs and patch jobs.


    ?Grubs, how is she holding up?¡°, the captain inquired.


    ?Didn¡¯t like it, as I said.¡°, the engineer answered, ?But she¡¯ll be ok. Warp generators will need an overhaul, though. They¡¯re not made for hard drops like that.¡°


    Red returned her eyes to the display. The viewport was of no use at such distances, even though the Milky Way had returned now that they were back in normal space. The scanner data started to appear, and confirmed that they had done well. One pristine Xylar hyperdrive core was waiting for them, dropped into 3D space when the dimensional shears punched a hole into the freighter¡¯s warp bubble. More valuable than any cargo the freighter carried, at least to the human race who to this day could not manufacture their own cores.


    The Xylar wouldn¡¯t turn around for it, they were masters of hyperspace technology, replacing it was a nuisance to them and not worth delaying a transport. Humans and their little piracy were like bugs to them.

 Junkstorm

    ?Slowing down. Junkstorm dead ahead.¡°, Twitch calmly mentioned.


    Two weeks had passed since their daring heist, and what repairs they could improvise on the go had all been completed. The Rusty Bolt was happily bubbling through hyperspace, the ship AI doing most of the work.


    The Junkstorm. Nothing special to a human observer, just some region near the edge of the galaxy, in the same spiral arm as Earth, a few hundred light years away from humanity¡¯s cradle. Twenty solar systems, sixteen of them with planets, five planets in four systems habitable, three of them actually inhabited. Well, three and a quarter or so, colonization of the fourth was underway.


    A refuge for humans. While it looked perfectly ordinary in 3D space, in the 6th and 7th dimension, the Junkstorm was a chaotic swirl of energies and forces, making it an inhospitable place for higher-dimensional beings. It also made higher-dimensional travel, also known as hyperspace, difficult. A price that mankind had to pay in order to have their own corner in the universe.


    The Rusty Bolt was heading towards planet five, Aethel. A habitable world near the edge of the Junkstorm. Avoided by humans because of the signs of past alien settlement efforts. And in a universe where humanity is a fledgling and primitive species, mankind takes great care to not accidentally step on the toes of some race that, as an old proverb whose origins had long been forgotten said, can wipe it out just to make room for a hyperspace express route.


    Twitch reduced the hyperspace factor by two dimensions, avoiding the distortions of the Junkstorm, but also cutting their speed by three quarters. It would take them three more days to reach the planet, now that they were traveling barely faster than the Xylar freighter they had plundered.


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    ?Let¡¯s call Bloom and look for a buyer.¡°, Red remarked as she emerged from the sleeping quarters of the Rusty Bolt. There were six cabins, for two shifts of three as a ship like this would have when it was not a pirate vessel. The crew had converted one cabin into an additional storage for personal gear and kept the other two for the occasional guest or passenger.


    She said down at the captain¡¯s station and flicked through the communications systems. The hyperspace transmitter switched on with a pop sound and a whiff of electrical smell in the air hinted that it, too, would benefit from some maintenance. It took a while for the system to compensate for the Junkstorm distortions, and even with error correction turned to max, at best an audio connection was what she could get. But as the Binary Bloom space station answered from the orbit of Aethel, she recognized the voice immediately.


    ?Faberto!¡°, Red exclaimed, ?Captain Red Rodriguez of the Rusty Bolt.¡°


    ?Hey Red.¡°, the man at the comms station seven light years away answered, with a latency of about two seconds, ?How is old Rusty keeping it together?¡°


    Red smiled. Before her inner eye she could see Faberto sitting at the comms, his slight pot-belly pushing against the console, sipping his seemingly never ending lukewarm coffee. At the moment, he was a reminder of a place she and the crew had been calling home for the past decade.


    ?She¡¯s doing great.¡°, Red answered him, ?And we are bringing home a present. Let Yezzania know and tell her to call me soon. Old Rusty needs some repairs and the sooner I get this thing sold, the earlier I can pay for them.¡°


    Two seconds later: ?Will do. Anything else?¡°


    ?Nothing special. We¡¯ll talk when I¡¯m there.¡°, Red said, knowing that she had been saying that for years and never gotten around to it. Faberto didn¡¯t seem to mind much. He was not the guy for long chats, maybe ironically given how often he was manning the comms. Then again maybe not, given that those were not there for idle talk.


    ?See you soon. Binary Bloom out.¡°

 Yezz

    An hour later, Yezzania was on the comms, and she was livid: ?I told you to call as soon as you¡¯re back, Red. You¡¯re three days from being back, why¡¯d you break radio silence?¡°


    ?Relax, Yezzania.¡°, Red responded through a connection that was barely holding up, ?We¡¯re already in the Junkstorm. Tricky enough to get a connection through at all.¡°


    Then she waited. Faster-than-light communication was not instantaneous. It was fast, two more powers than FTL travel, but at their current distance the latency was still more than twenty seconds.


    Yezzania¡¯s voice was ice-cold as she answered that much later: ?Red. Were you born yesterday? We both know there are aliens out there with much better tech than us. And for some of them, breaking our encryption is a middle-school science project. I hope none of them are listening. Keep radio silence until you are at the station. Out.¡°


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    Silence fell over the cockpit of the Rusty Bolt, interrupted only by the whirring of the hyperspace drive and the blaring of the sensors picking up interference. That was not the welcome they had expected.


    ?What does Yezz know that we don¡¯t?¡°, Grubs wondered out loud what they were all thinking, and calling their trusted fence by a short he wouldn¡¯t dare to use if she were in the room. Even though she was a whole head shorter and maybe half his weight.


    Twitch looked at Grubs: ?We¡¯ve all looked at the thing in our cargo hold for two weeks. It¡¯s a hyperdrive core. There¡¯s millions of them in the galaxy. Why would anyone care that we nicked one?¡°


    Both of them looked at Red, and saw her tapping her chipped tooth with a fingernail, a sign that she was deep in thoughts.


    ?I don¡¯t know.¡°, Grubs answered, chewing on a piece of wire as if it were candy, ?It¡¯s obviously little used, maybe completely new. It¡¯s worth a fortune to us humans, but to the Xylars? Like losing a sock - yeah it¡¯ll bother you but no big deal.¡°


    Silence returned while the three were lost in their thoughts. It would be a long three days, and if Yezzania told them to keep radio silence, they¡¯d do exactly that.

 Core Trouble

    Red slammed her fist on the metal table, the clang echoing through the dimly lit backroom Yezzania used as an office. ?Trouble? You got us into a heaping supernova of trouble!¡° she roared, her voice barely contained.


    The women across the table sat unflinching. The network of glowing tattoos snaking across her face and visible skin pulsed faintly, mirroring the anger simmering in the room. ?Captain Rodriguez,¡° she rasped, her voice clear and calm, a steady counterpoint to Red¡¯s fury, ?I merely provide the intel as best as I can. My sources didn¡¯t indicate anything unusual.¡°


    Red refused to be soothed. They had docked the Rusty Bolt barely half an hour ago and she had rushed to meet Yezz immediately. Twitch sat beside her, fidgeting with a non-existent speck on his sleeve, clearly uncomfortable in the charged atmosphere. Grubs had parked his tinkering soul at the docking bay, to work out what repairs and maintenance work their ship needed.


    ?Well, do your sources tell you just why the Xylars are jumping up and down over this?¡°, Red demanded, with a voice like a laser cutting through plasteel.


    ?Xylars can¡¯t jump.¡°, Twitch mumbled, earning twin glares of withering intensity. He held his hands up placatingly. ?It¡¯s in their biology. Like the elephants on Earth?¡°, he trailed off as both women stared him down.


    ?What¡¯s that got to do wi¡­¡°, Red started, ?Nobody cares, Twitch.¡°, Yezz interrupted, leaning forward and returning her attention to Red. Her voice was low and urgent as she continued: ?Look, Red. I don¡¯t yet have answers. All I know is that our border scouts are all agitated about the Xylar, and word is that the planetary presidents got official diplomatic messages essentially saying ?turn over the criminals or else¡­¡®. If Binary Bloom were a bit more famous, we¡¯d be having human warships breathing down our necks by now. And who knows how much longer until someone decides there might be credits in it if they talk.¡°


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    ?It¡¯s a damn hyper core. The Xylars churn out thousands of them every year.¡°, Red scoffed.


    ?I know, and not just because you say that every heist.¡°, Yezz conceded, ?There must be something about it that we don¡¯t see. Something in the higher dimensions perhaps.¡°


    A heavy silence descended upon them. Each mind wrestled with the unknown, the weight of the Xylars'' unusual reaction pressing down. Finally, Twitch broke the quiet. "So, Yezzania,¡° he drawled, his voice strained, "you got any shady scientist contacts who can peek into those higher dimensions and see what''s going on?"


    ?I might¡°, the fence said slowly, her eyes glinting with a hint of mischief. ?I¡¯ll make a few calls and let you know. Until then, you lot lay low and the story you¡¯re telling everyone is that the heist was a fail, got it?¡°


    Red and Twitch nodded.


    ?Good¡°, Yezz continued, ?Because I have something else that¡¯ll cheer you up and make it easier to keep this hush-hush.¡°. She paused a second for dramatic effect, and got the full attention of the other two before continuing, ?I might already have a buyer, and they¡¯re paying in intergalactic.¡°


    A small whistle escaped Red¡¯s lips, ?That¡¯s hard to come by in human space. We can get some alien tech for it on the trade ports. So I guess¡­¡°


    ?Don¡¯t.¡°, Yezz interrupted her softly but firmly, and Red took the hint.

 The Plot Thickens

    ?That was weirder than a three-headed arcworm.¡°, Twitch remarked as they walked through the twisting hallways of Binary Bloom back towards the docking bay. His voice echoed slightly in the metal tunnels they passed through, the uneven patchwork of the space station''s hull scraping past them like the bony fingers of a forgotten giant.


    Red, brow furrowed in thought, didn¡¯t respond, her bootsteps a rhythmic counterpoint to the distant clang of unseen metalworks. Navigating by habit, she took advantage of Binary Bloom¡¯s chaotic layout. No two sections were ever quite alike, a boon to those who knew its labyrinthine ways. Reaching a three-way intersection marked by a tangle of hissing pipes, they turned left. A transparent wall section offered a rare glimpse outside. Here, Binary Bloom shed its pretense. To any outside observer, it would appear as the derelict husk of an old alien space station. A broken skeletal giant, ravaged by time and neglect. Jagged sections of missing hull gaped like wounds, while others bore the scars of countless meteoroid strikes, bearing witness to the harshness of space.


    On the inside, pirates had taken over the halls and corridors, ripped out and replaced walls and floors, patched up holes in the exterior, re-purposed pipes and access shafts. It was a station built within a station, growing over the years, though there were sections that Binary Bloom had not yet expanded into. And even the broken, smashed up parts served a purpose, hiding in their shadows the docking bays used by the pirate vessels that called Binary Bloom their home.


    The two strolled onto one of the main arteries of the station, a bustling avenue thrumming with life. Most people on Bloom walked, and you could cross it from one end to the other in about fifteen to twenty minutes. There were ten- or twelve-thousand permanent residents and around a thousand visitors at any given time.


    The market they now approached was a bustling heart amidst the station''s metallic veins. It sprawled across three of the station''s five floors, a vibrant tapestry of sights and smells and one of the few large open spaces on the station. Its location, nestled between the main docking bays and the station''s core, made it a natural meeting point for both local and visiting merchants. There was another, much smaller, market deeper within the station and catering to a different clientele ¨C the hydroponics farmers and local craftspeople.


    The market was spacious, with ample room between the stalls, most of which were semi-permanent buildings with a ground floor as a shop space and an upper floor used for storage. Some of them instead had a small living space for the merchant up top, especially popular with visiting traders who sought to avoid the hassle of separate lodgings.


    ?Grubs can wait a few more minutes.¡°, Red remarked as they joined with the crowd inside the market, ?Anything worth it is always in short supply here, let¡¯s stock up before it¡¯s gone.¡°


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    With a few glances, they had found their bearings and proceeded towards the traders they were familiar with, while keeping an eye open for any temporary stalls that might have something interesting for sale.


    They quickly made a deal to get spare parts and hydraulic fluids delivered to the Rusty Bolt with one of the regulars, aside a short chat to pick up the latest gossip. A passing merchant offered packaged food, but they knew the local merchants at the food market had better prices, and until they got paid for their most recent heist, saving credits mattered.


    They stopped at another permanent shop at the edge of the market. ?Hey Elias¡°, Twitch greeted the owner.


    ?Twitch Miller, in the flesh. Ah, and captain Rodriguez as well. I just talked to Ranald and he mentioned that you docked.¡°, Elias answered. He was a man in his 50s and one could still make out that he used to be more athletic in his past. First grey spots appeared in his beard as well, but his clothes were as immaculate as always.


    ?Word spreads fast¡°, Red began, and Elias finished the sentence: ?as it always does. Indeed.¡°


    Twitch smiled amused and began to look through Elias¡¯s display. The tinkerer often had improved, re-purposed or otherwise interesting tools for sale. Especially his electronics, which were among the best at the market.


    Red, however, had noticed that Elias''s normally jovial demeanor had been replaced by a stoic seriousness. She locked eyes with him, and as he did not offer up an immediate continuation, she probed him: ?Not sure if we can afford any of your items today. Our last heist was a failure. We have some reserves, but I¡¯ll need to see how much is left over after repairs.¡°


    Elias held her gaze without flinching and let her talk. With the smallest hint of a smile in only one corner of his lips, he checked back: ?You can pay in intergalactic credits, not a problem.¡°


    Red froze. Only her darting eyes, desperately searching for a give-away in Elias¡¯s face betrayed her racing mind. After a few endless seconds, she pressed out: ?Word does not travel that fast.¡°


    Elias gestured towards a narrow, rickety staircase tucked away in a corner behind his tinkering tools, the faint hum of the marketplace activity a stark contrast to the sudden tension in the room. ?Perhaps we can sip a tea and catch up on the latest gossip together?¡°


    Red narrowed her eyes just a bit, then turned to Twitch: ?We¡¯ll be upstairs for a moment. Take your time.¡°


    ?With pleasure.¡°, Twitch responded with a short glance sideways, lost in his browsing.


    Red began to climb the creaking steps after Elias, leaving the cluttered shop and the watchful eyes of the station behind. She emerged into a small but surprisingly orderly room that was part workshop and part living space. No bed, so Elias had accommodations elsewhere, but a nice place to unwind from the market for a bit - or to hold clandestine meetings. She noticed that the room had no windows.


    ?How do you know?¡°, Red started immediately after sitting down. Elias had his back turned to her while he was preparing two cups of tea in the small kitchen corner. She had carefully chosen her words so that she was giving away nothing.

 Tea & Secrets

    Elias poured two steaming cups of tea from the pot sitting on the table between them, an old fashioned tea candle burning underneath it. A barely perceptible smile flickering across his face. ?Let¡¯s just say I have my ways.¡°, he said, his voice a low rumble. ?And you just confirmed that my sources were spot on.¡°


    Red stared intently at the surface of her tea, the swirling steam blurring her reflection while she was clearing her thoughts. She didn''t look up as Elias continued.


    ?Yezz is only thinking of her profits.¡°, the tinkerer continued, ?But this has the potential to put Binary Bloom on the radar of forces that may not be interested in its continued existence. I, for one, am rather fond of this little den. Which means resolving this problem and getting the thing off the station, fast.¡°


    Red grunted, while carefully planning her response. It was not unusual for inhabitants of Bloom to have more than one day job, to have connections to one or more often several of the factions within the station. In spying and intrigue the pirate hideout could compete with any medieval royal court. But they had walked to the market directly from their meeting with Yezz, and spent less than half an hour browsing before coming to Elias. That was an impressive level of being informed, and well above what Red would have expected from the average resident.


    After another moment, with Elias patiently awaiting her response while sipping his own tea, Red spoke up as if thinking aloud: ?Selling it quickly to an off-station buyer would get it away, wouldn¡¯t it? And move the interest of the Xylars or whoever to that buyer, right?¡°


    ?They aren¡¯t known for grudges, so I would think that once you have entirely untangled your crew from this matter they wouldn¡¯t bother pursuing you any longer, yes.¡°, Elias agreed.


    ?Ah, and you merely intend to help me unburden myself, out of the goodness of your heart, of course.¡°, Red stated plainly, finding Elias¡¯s gaze and holding it. The sounds of the market outside became background noise as the smell of fresh tea and tense conversation filled the room.


    ?Oh, not at all.¡°, Elias leaned back while giving his answer. ?On the contrary, this will benefit me more than it benefits you and your crew, but it¡¯s still a better deal than what Yezz offers.¡°


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    ?I¡¯m listening.¡°


    Elias leaned forward slightly. ?Who do you think Yezz¡¯s buyer is? Why do you think the Xylars are not ignoring this one? Could it be that losing it is bad, but having it end up in the wrong hands is even worse? Might that not bring about even more trouble for you?¡°


    ?You¡¯re doing business with the Xylars and offered them to retrieve the core for them!¡°, Red exclaimed, a look of surprise crossing her face. ?We were in transit for two weeks. More than enough time to put the pieces together and broker a deal. You didn¡¯t find out about Yezz¡¯s offer in the past hour, you knew it for days!¡°


    Elias picked up his tea in an obvious attempt to buy time, examined Red¡¯s face and finally, with his head tilted the slightest of angles, responded ?Parts of that are not entirely false, but most of it is idle speculation. Now, I do understand that you value your relation to Yezzania, her reliable intel on possible heists and her ability to fence stolen alien tech at good prices. I believe we can convince her that for the good of Binary Bloom, and thus her own business, this particular good should be sold off into the right hands.¡°


    ?Then why not approach her, instead of me?¡°


    ?Because the object of all of these talks is in your cargo hold, not hers. You work with her, not for her, and could decide to sell it to someone else.¡°


    Silence filled the room while Red contemplated. Finally, she lowered her gaze back to her tea, a thoughtful frown creasing her forehead. ?What exactly is your offer, Elias?¡°, she said, her voice calmer but laced with curiosity. ?Not that you should see this as agreeing. I need to know what alternative you are offering before I can consider it fully.¡°


    ?Off course. I won¡¯t ask for the price that Yezz has offered¡°, Elias continued, with a well-hidden probing glance at Red to see if her expression would give a hint away, ?but I am confident that my buyers can match it, if not more. In addition, I can have a cover story created that will point the Xylars or whoever else cares to investigate away from Binary Bloom, and from you and your crew.¡°


    ?All upsides and no downsides? Where¡¯s the catch?¡°


    ?There isn¡¯t one, really.¡°, Elias said while leaning back and taking a sip of his tea. ?And if you find any, I¡¯m sure we can sort them out. I can assure you, and you¡¯ve known me for years, haven¡¯t you?, that both me and my buyer are interested to protect this station from the fallout that the aliens just might cause.¡°


    Red caught on to him not naming the Xylars, leaving it open whether or not he was referring to them or some other galactic race. But she kept her observation to herself.


    ?I will think about it and discuss it with my crew, Elias.¡°, she answered him, ?That is the best I can offer right now.¡°


    The tinkerer gave her a silent glance and took another sip of tea, stretching the silence in the room that was punctured by occasional noises from the market outside, before he nodded: ?Fair enough. Please do.¡°


    He put down his tea and stood up.

 Friends

    Red came down the stairs and stopped at a sight that was both unbelievable and cute - Twitch in an intense conversation with a gorgeous young woman, possibly late 20s, early 30s, both smiling, occasionally laughing and now and then touching each other gently.


    He had spotted her as she slowly walked down the last few steps and turned around: ?Oh hey Red. Uh, this is Valarie. Val, this is Captain Red.¡°


    Valarie turned to Red and put out a hand, the arm covered in the sleeves of the mixture of overall and kimono that she was wearing and which was a big fashion trend on Binary Bloom these days.


    Red approached her, taking in her slender figure, slightly too puffed face and brownish hair. They shook hands.


    ?Color me surprised. Twitch here never mentioned he has a girlfriend on the station.¡°


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    The hint of a blush coming to Valarie¡¯s face let her know that the two were still dating, and maybe hadn¡¯t made it official just yet. But the other woman quickly found her wits again: ?We¡¯re not calling it that, yet.¡° She shot a quick side-glance at the Rusty Bolt¡¯s pilot, who was slightly more nervous than her. ?Life is chaotic sometimes. I heard your last haul was a miss. Does that mean you¡¯re going out again soon?¡°


    So Twitch had followed Yezz¡¯s instructions, Red noted. Good.


    ?You¡¯ll have him for a few days at least. We¡¯re trying to figure out what to do next. Besides, our ship needs some repairs.¡°


    Valarie smiled at that, and gave Twitch a small bop on the sides.


    ?Twitch¡°, Red turned to him, ?Can you be at the Rusty Bolt in an hour? So we can discuss next steps with Grubs?¡°


    Twitch nodded, ?Sure thing captain.¡°


    ?Great. See you then. Take care you two. Valarie, nice meeting you. Come to dinner with us today or tomorrow?¡°


    ?With pleasure¡°, Valarie answered, with another smile crossing her lips.

 Repairs

    Grubs had exchanged the fingers on his cybernetic arm with a set of tools and was half inside Rusty Bolt¡¯s starboard engine. He was working quietly, calmly, methodically. Opening up panels, tightening vales and bolts, inspecting cables and pipes. With the outer plates taken off, the engine was a tangle of pipes, combustion chambers and electronics, some of it obviously not part of the original design. The engine was shut down, but being in the belly of the ship, there were sounds of coolant rushing through nearby pipes and the clangs and clicks of other parts of the ship working in standby, keeping the main systems running.


    In his 50-odd years he had seen and fixed plenty of ship parts, and a good portion of Rusty Bolt¡¯s excellent performance on the job was his jury-rigged touches. On the downside, that meant that many parts of the cobbled together pirate ship only he could fix up properly. Pointless to outsource work if explaining all the modifications to a station mechanic would take longer than just doing the job himself.


    There were still plenty of standard parts, and said station mechanics were working on those, in order to get Rusty Bolt ready for the next job. Life as a pirate meant everything had to be ready so the crew could assemble and launch on short notice, so they could take opportunities as they appeared.


    Spare parts, reaction mass, fresh water and food were all ordered and would arrive sometime within the day.


    ?Hey Grubs, old man!¡°, shouted a deep voice through the noise of repairs and machinery, and a broad-shouldered man in working clothes climbed up into the engine room.


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    Grubs moved until he could poke out his head to look, then emerged entirely and gave the newcomer a wide grin. ?Micah! What are you bastard doing here?¡°


    They gave each other a short embrace and bump, Micah being two heads shorter than Grubs but just as wide and very muscular due to growing up on a high-gravity planet.


    ?Thought you could need some help. Given that you¡¯re close to pension age and all.¡°, Micah replied, himself being mid-30s.


    Grubs scoffed. ?Says who? But yeah, at least one more pair of hands that are actually competent would help. We had a rough ride and while she¡¯s holding on well, some work is needed.¡°


    ?Sure thin, Grubs.¡°, Micah gave the engine a quick glance, ?You ok otherwise? Haven¡¯t heard from you for a while.¡°


    ?I¡¯m fine, yeah. Been keeping busy.¡°


    ?So I heard. Greetings from Gena by the way. She was on the station recently for a week or so, but you were out. We talked a bit. You know, about you, about Nikki, old stuff.¡°


    Grubs tightened his shoulders for a second, and for a tiny moment narrowed his eyes. ?Yeah¡°, he said simply.


    Grubs had become visibly uncomfortable and avoided looking Micah in the eye.


    ?Grubs. It¡¯s been what, two years since Nikki passed away? You¡¯ve got to let go, man. Gena was devastated as well for a year or so. You two should¡¯ve talked more.¡°


    ?She is her sister. Not her husband.¡°, Grubs snapped, his voice clearly controlled to sound calm and neutral, but barely managing so.


    Micah sighed, a mixture of emotions on his face in quick succession. As a friend, it was hard for him to see Grubs suffer, but he was also becoming angry that the guy just kept it all inside when so many of his friends and family were there to help.


    ?Was, Grubs. Was.¡°


    There was an uneasy silence for a while, broken only by the hum of the ship and the distant noises from the docking bay. Both men looking at machine parts rather than each other. It was Micah who broke the silence finally: ?Anyway, what exactly do you need help with?¡°

 Onwards

    ?Wormgate? You know I hate those things!¡°, Red grunted.


    She was sitting opposite Yezz, this time in her own living room. Grubs was sitting to her left in an armchair while Twitch was standing in a corner, nervously fidgeting with a small metallic sphere from a nearby shelf that Red had kept from their job on Petaron.


    The day since their last meeting had been busy with repairs, restocks, keeping in touch with friends and family or just plain old housekeeping. Red had spacious quarters, given the sometimes cramped conditions of a space station. A glass door led into a small indoor garden, and an open doorway connected the living room to the dining room. The captain kept her home on Binary Bloom as tidy as her quarter on the Rusty Bolt, but with more space had added more decorations and comfort. Right now the three of them were lounging around a low coffee table surrounded by a wide couch that Red had offered to Yezz and two armchairs, one for Grubs and one for Red herself. Twitch had pulled over a chair from the dining room, but after a few minutes decided that he¡¯d rather stand.


    ?The Aerax are excellent wormhole engineers¡° Yezz began, but Red interrupted her mid-sentence, her voice slightly strained: ?That¡¯s not it and you know it. The whole wormholes thing freaks me out. Two points in space a thousand light years apart touching each other? And then these seven dimensional freaks turn that into a permanent connection? I don¡¯t care what the scientists say, there¡¯s going to be some serious fuckery with that sooner or later.¡°


    ?The last wormhole incident was thirty years go, on the other side of the galaxy. And no reported casualties.¡°, Twitch calmly remarked. Grubs shot him a quick glance while the two women ignored him.


    ?It¡¯s only around 600 light years, and you know that even at full speed it would take your ship almost a year round-trip. And that¡¯s ignoring that it doesn¡¯t have that kind of range. The Aerax wormgate is the only way. We need to get that core looked at, and there aren¡¯t any scientists or labs in the Junkstorm that I know of or trust enough to do it.¡°


    Red and Grubs exchanged an unspoken conversation with their eyes, and after a moment the captain answered with a more calm voice: ?It¡¯ll cost you an additional five percent.¡°


    ?Two percent.¡°, Yezz shot back immediately.


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    ?Three.¡°


    ?Agreed.¡°


    The two women shook hands to seal the deal, and Yezz projected a local star map from her digital assistant, a tablet she preferred over the more common watches because she liked to write more than dictating voice notes.


    ?It¡¯s a quick 23 light years outside the Junkstorm. Practically next door. Six days if you hurry a bit.¡°


    ?Eight at least.¡°, Twitch injected, ?Three days to the edge of the Junkstorm, Five to the gate.¡°


    ?And we¡¯ll need to haul payment for the aliens.¡°, Grubs added.


    ?How far from the other end of it to your contact?¡°, Red asked.


    Yezz tapped on the PDA, changing the map: ?The destination gate is right on the edge of the Lagoon Nebula, and I know that¡¯s the most distant pocket of humans in space, but like the Junkstorm most aliens don¡¯t like the region, so it¡¯s what our primitive species gets to call a home.¡°


    Grubs studied the map and looked at the scale display it showed. ?Four days from the gate, I reckon. So 12 each way.¡°


    ?Three or four for the lab to get some results. Not even a month.¡°, Yezz continued with a cheerful voice.


    ?Don¡¯t see a better option.¡°, Red sank comfortably into her armchair, just a hint of worry still lingering in her eyes. Grubs also visibly relaxed, the immediate next steps now being clear. Twitch put the sphere back on the shelf and came to sit in his chair again.


    ?What about Elias¡¯s offer?¡°, Red put the spice back into the conversation.


    Yezz closed the map and looked up: ?First of all, thanks for coming to me with that, instead of going behind my back.¡°, Yezz added.


    ?Wouldn¡¯t do that.¡°, Red looked at their fence, ?The station is too small for intrigue and betrayal.¡°


    Yezz gave a quick laugh: ?You wish. Lucky you, not being home all that often you don¡¯t see it. Anyway, ¡°, she changed the topic, ?I have not technically committed to my buyer, but it does put me in an awkward position. Elias is not willing to offer up more details about his buyer? I¡¯m mostly asking to avoid us doing a whole dance and it¡¯s the same one who just wants to make sure he¡¯s getting it.¡°


    ?Nope.¡°, Red remarked, ?His lips are sealed on that. He¡¯ll happily talk about whatever else you want, but he¡¯s keeping that a secret.¡°


    ?Not his only secret, I believe.¡°, Yezz wondered, her gaze lost in space for a second, before she continued: ?I don¡¯t have an easy solution. But if you¡¯re gone for a month, if you trust me with this, I¡¯m sure that I can figure something out.¡°


    ?We¡¯ve always trusted you with the business side of things.¡°, Grubs stated factually.


    ?And we can always have a chat on the hyperspace frequencies.¡°, Red added, ?And yes, I understand we¡¯ll have to talk so that any aliens listening in don¡¯t know what we¡¯re talking about.¡°


    ?If, and only if, necessary, that would be an option.¡°, Yezz agreed.


    ?Let¡¯s get to it then.¡°, Red decided for her crew after getting their approval with quick glances to her sides, ?What can we bring to the Aerax as transit payment?¡°

 Diplomacy

    ?Good enough, agent.¡°, the officer on the holographic display boomed. ?It¡¯s not perfect but possibly the best we could hope for, for the moment.¡°


    Elias sank deeper into the worn fabric of his pilot''s seat, the cramped cockpit a stark contrast to the officer''s pristine image. He had rented a small interplanetary ship, the kind the inhabitants of Binary Bloom used to take a quick holiday on the planet¡¯s surface. Unlike them, however, he had taken it to the opposite side of Aethel, putting the pirate outpost into the planet¡¯s radio shadow.


    ?And payment in intergalactic credits won¡¯t be a problem?¡°. A frown creased Elias''s brow as he scrutinized the officer''s face, his eyes narrowed slightly. He forced his face into a mask of indifference.


    His conversation partner was only a few lightyears away, but even with the high-powered planetary transmitter on his end, the delay for the signal was about three seconds. It was just about possible to have a normal conversation.


    ?We have a few million of those available. Who knew that music would become our main export for a few years? Especially the Felindar planets are big fans. So our exchange bank has taken in more intergalactic credits than we are spending, and we have some reserves sitting there for opportunities such as this.¡°


    ?Glad to hear that, sir.¡°, Elias responded. Then he raised an eyebrow and tilted his head ever so slightly to the side:?What about the Xylars?¡°


    The seconds passed slowly, then the answer came: ?We have a trusted intermediate. As soon as the core is in our hands, we will let them know that it is available for purchase. Let them join the bidding.¡°


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    ?After our scientists took a good look at it, of course.¡°


    The officer nodded. ?Standard procedure for any core that we haven¡¯t examined already. One day, we will unlock their secrets and humanity will take its rightful place in the galaxy. No more scavenging for scraps. Hyperdrive technology of our own."


    Elias took a deep breath, crossed his arms and leaned back in the pilot chair. He said nothing to fill the pause.


    ?Anyway.¡°, his holographic conversation partner continued after a long while. Playing the silent treatment game took more patience over interstellar distances, but Elias had ample experience. The officer continued: ?That is unlikely to happen in the near future, so we will need places like that pirate station and we¡¯ll need you on it.¡°


    Elias nodded slowly. ?I¡¯m aware how important this is. Still no luck with getting more alien tech through trade?¡°


    ?We are an anomaly in the galaxy.¡°, the other man sighed. ¡°Most of them treat us like we would treat a toddler asking to play with a gun. Some of them don¡¯t speak to us at all. And rumors have it that most of the aliens we do have regular contact with have a special, dumbed-down vocabulary for talking to us or other primitive races.¡°


    ?What did we expect?¡°, Elias mused, ?Some of those aliens have been conquering the stars for thousands of years. Of course they are more advanced.¡°


    The other man chuckled. It seemed strangely disconnected due to the delay. ?It shows you¡¯re not working in alien diplomacy. It¡¯s not just technological progress. But enough of that. We need all that alien tech loot that the pirates steal to advance humanity. Your work so far have been invaluable, and if this one blows your cover, we will find another place for you to continue. There are plenty of pirate outposts in the seven human regions.¡°


    ?Give me a chance.¡°, Elias pressed, a hint of desperation in his voice. ?It took years to build my network and gain trust among the pirates. I can keep the cover intact. Only a handful of people had to know, and for all they know, I¡¯m just another fence with a different business front.¡°


    Silence filled the cockpit of the rented craft. Then the holographic display returned to life. ?Can¡¯t afford losing you. I¡¯ll let you try. But at the first sign of trouble, you will disappear, understood?¡°


    ?Thank you, sir.¡°

 Situation Room

    Sunlight streamed through the panoramic windows of the high-rise conference room, illuminating the faces of the assembled council. On one side sat civilians in crisp suits and tailored dresses, their expressions grim. Opposite them, military men and women, all high-ranking officers, wore faces equally focussed and determined. A faint smell of coffee and leather mingled with the tension in the room.


    Outside, the city sprawled across the earth-like landscape, houses, offices, maglev train lines and in the distance factories and the spaceport. It was early afternoon, with a few scattered clouds across the sky that looked almost, but not quite, like the sky on Earth.


    The multimedia display wall at the head of the table showed a 2D map of the Junkstorm, the three solar systems inhabited by humans highlighted by three dots glowing light blue against the black background that symbolized space.


    Outside the Junkstorm, a dozen solar systems were highlighted in red, each surrounded by small red elongated triangles varying in number between five and twenty-six.


    A table of numbers was displayed in the lower-left corner of the display. It read ?Xylars, 92 capital ships, ca. 600 other combat crafts¡° and ?Erulas, 8 capital ships, 124 other combat crafts¡°.


    ?Members of the council,¡°, a middle-aged woman in uniform with plenty of medals continued her presentation, ?We have so far no indication of the Xylars launching an attack force. However, given their hyperspace capabilities and the intel we have gathered, we estimate that by the time we get reliable data indicating an attack fleet, they will be a just days outside the Junkstorm.¡°


    The participants of the meeting were disciplined enough to not interrupt. She continued: ?As we all know, the Junkstorm messes with them in the higher dimensions. Our best guess is that they would hold at the edge, and send drones. We have never had a combat encounter with the Xylars, but even at our most optimistic estimate, just a few drones would suffice to eliminate our capital ships before we can stop them.¡°


    She turned sharply and walked back to her seat.


    One of the civilian women spoke up, dressed in an exquisite robe of office: ?So much for our military options. Thank you, Colonel.¡° She gestured with her open hand to her left. ?Dr. Chen, which insights can the xenopsychology department provide?¡°


    ?Unfortunately, I can make it short.¡°, the slender man in a suit that he clearly was not used to wearing daily said without standing up. ?The Xylars are agitated and we have heard earlier the demands they make of us. Their approach and wording suggests strongly that they are certain of humans being the culprits of this heist. It is unlikely that a denial would be believed. We also need to consider that the Xylars are a very social and cohesive species who have in the past shown limited understanding of human society. As we are a minor species in the galaxy, the Xylars rarely spend time or energy on researching human culture or psychology in depth. There are certainly experts on us among them, but we can not say if they will be invited to a discussion such as the one we are having currently. It might just as well be that their expertise is not valued or not widely known.¡°


    ?Thank you.¡°, the robed woman concluded. Her name-tag said ?Amara Vance, President¡°. She looked to her right and then slowly along the line of officers opposite her. ?As we heard before, our own intelligence agrees with the Xylars. The most likely scenario is that one of the pirate crews the Junkstorm harbors is responsible. Nobody can say from which of the two pirate outposts they might be. Our military is useless against the aliens, but more than enough to deal with a few pirates. We need to get the stolen hyperdrive core into our hands before the Xylars decide to take it by force. We have enough ships to lay siege to both stations. The other planetary governments will provide support logistics, we don¡¯t need their small military fleets. Any objections?¡°


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    Most of the participants of the meeting nodded in agreement, but one man at the far end of the table, in a modest suit, greying hair and slightly overweight, spoke up: ?Yes, madam president.¡° He paused for a second until he had everyone¡¯s attention, and then continued with a calm but commanding voice: ?For two decades we have maintained plausible deniability with regards to the pirate stations. Not just towards the Xylars, who may or may not believe us, but also towards other alien races.¡° He tapped a few times on his watch and the display wall flickered, showing a table of economics data and graphs visualizing the same. He took a sip from the glass of water standing in front of him, allowing everyone in the room to scan over the numbers. Then he went on: ?This arrangement has been mutually beneficial. The alien technology acquired by the pirates is sold largely to other humans. Exact numbers are impossible to obtain, but our estimate is that this makes up around 90% of the piracy business. This inflow of alien technology not only provides our scientists with a continuous supply of research objects, and our engineers with invaluable technology we require but cannot manufacture ourselves such as the high-dimensional hyperdrive cores, it also gives us goods to trade with other aliens. As you can see in these figures, the legitimate trade we conduct with the goods acquired by pirates made up 19% of our exports with non-human civilizations.¡°


    Vance interrupted: ?How much of the trade with the distant human pockets?¡°


    ?About 12%.¡° was the answer.


    The room became quiet as everyone took in the numbers. Glances were exchanged and notes scribbled. Vance pursed her lips, her eyes scanning the numbers again and again. The distant roar of a starship rising up at the spaceport filled the audible space, until the man whose name tag identified him as ?Ishac Sparks, Diplomatic Advisor¡° continued: ?If our fleets suddenly appeared at the pirate outposts that we have for years claimed to know nothing about, we risk a diplomatic firestorm, a seizable drop in trade and most likely demands to eliminate the pirates, depriving us of all these advantages. And if the aliens don¡¯t demand it of us, our fleet¡¯s presence is likely to reveal the location of these outposts to them and they just might take care of the pirates by themselves.¡°


    A broad-shouldered general with jet-black short hair on the military side of the table was the first to add his thoughts after a brief pause, leaning back in his chair. ?I concur. A show of force would eliminate a strategic advantage we currently hold, however small it may be. I have a different suggestion. Our fleet has half a dozen smaller ships outfitted as traders and other civilians, some of them could with quick updates pass as pirate vessels. Send two or three of these to each of the stations, with a platoon of marines. We show force inside the stations, not outside. Let the pirates understand that we know all about them, without showing it to any observing aliens. Meet with the people in charge of each station and let them know we need that core, or else.¡°


    There were murmurs of agreement on the civilian side of the table, and several of the military members of the ad-hoc council also nodded. Only Colonel Sato, who had given the presentation before, disagreed: ?General, with all due respect, we do not have the time for subtleties. Our diplomats may have to smooth over some ruffled feathers, but to the Xylars we are like mice in the barn - barely tolerated as long as we don¡¯t make any serious trouble. And we¡¯ve just done exactly that. If we do not undo the damage ASAP they will just stomp us out. Our actions here decide the fate of 400 million souls on Erulas alone.¡°


    ?Colonel¡°, the general responded, ?thank you for your thoughts. This is meant as a show of force to the pirates. A platoon of marines can cause serious havoc on a pirate outpost if they want to. I¡¯m quite sure the outlaws will be happy to discuss terms to keep our soldiers on their ships.¡°


    President Vance intervened, straightening the sleeves of her robe: ?General, can we send two platoons to each station? Just to make sure our point is clear? And maybe have some of our battleships go on patrol conveniently nearby, close enough that the pirates understand but far enough to not give their location away to any aliens?¡°


    The general pinched the bridge of his nose, lips pursed in a tight line as he considered. Seconds stretched as all eyes in the room focussed on him. Finally, he simply said: ?I think that can be arranged.¡°

 The Others

    The DSF Volcano was a sleek, black shadow in the vastness of space, its shape that of an arrow tip. It was illuminated on one side by the red giant it used for camouflage, its own signature drowned out by the radiation of the star just a few light minutes away.


    Inside, Lieutenant Zala looked at the screens in front of her with a mixture of frustration and determination. Her slim face was illuminated by the colors of the displays. Four other soldiers were crammed into the bridge, the most important one for the moment being Corporal Khon to her left, sitting at the navigation and sensors station. A red warning label flashed at the top of the sensors display, pulsing the words ?unidentified vessel¡°.


    ?Speed measurements zero in at C-12.¡°, the young navigator reported, pushing back the glasses perched on his nose. ?Distance is two hundred one-six light hours. Closest approach at current course will be one hundred four-zero light hours. ETA forty three minutes.¡°


    ?Anything on the comms?¡°, Lieutenant Zala rasped, her voice calm but with a hint of tension.


    ?Nothing ma¡¯am.¡°, the comms officer answered.


    ?Looks like another Qyrl probe to me.¡°, Khon offered, his fingers tapping on the side of the keyboard in front of him while sensor data flowed across the screen.¡°


    The lieutenant checked the screens, her gaze hardening. She made a decision: ?Third one in as many days. Alright, set intercept course. Whatever the insects are after, our mission is to keep the space around Dephyr clean.¡°


    The navigator punched instructions into the console and within seconds the ship AI had plotted a course that would make them meet the probe near to its closest approach.


    Zala enabled the internal comms to inform the other fourteen crew members: ?Ready for hyperspace in one minute.¡°


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    On the outside, the rear of the DSF Volcano lit up as the sub-light thrusters engaged and accelerated the ship towards its destination. The flaming spout of a tamed stellar explosion generated enough force to propel the sixty meters patrol ship forward with a jolt. Without the graviton dampers, the crew would have become red smears on the interior walls. Accelerating constantly, the ship sped away from the red giant. Moments later, it seemed to wave and fold in on itself before disappearing into hyperspace.


    Forty-one minutes later, DSF Volcano arrived at the intercept point, but remained in hyperspace. Inside the bridge, sensors showed the approaching probe and Khon began to accelerate the ship again in the direction the probe was traveling, almost matching its speed so that after a few more minutes the probe caught up to them.


    ?Engage the dimensional shears. Let¡¯s force it into normal space.¡°


    ?Engaging¡°, the confirmation came out of the comms. An eerie blue light emerged from the field projectors on the outside of the ship and extended towards the alien probe. It wrapped around it like honey, forming an uneven, wobbly bubble that enclosed both ships.


    ?Disable hyperdrive!¡°, Zala ordered calm and controlled.


    ?Hyperdrive disabled.¡°, Corporal Khon replied, and the stars of the Milky Way returned to the viewports as they returned to normal space, the probe one ship-length away from them. Cameras zoomed in on it and showed an exoskeleton-like form the size of a large truck, woven from a dark, metallic material that had a distinct organic look, shimmering slightly in the darkness. Thin tendrils sprouted from it in several places, slowly twitching like grotesque feelers.


    ?Definitely a Qyrl probe.¡°, the captain sighed wearily, looking at the bio-engineered space ship on the screen. ?The previous ones were unarmed, but ready on the weapons stations anyways.¡°


    Several ?ready!¡° confirmations crackled through the comms.


    ?We should report this to command on Dephyr, captain.¡°, Khon suggested, his words laced with unease. ?We usually see one or two of those in a year. Now three at once? The Qyrl are gathering intel on us.¡°


    ?Definitely. Highly unusual. Latest intel we got on them was that the isolationist factions are still in charge by a large majority. And these are not diplomatic missions or trade offers. Command needs to be in the loop.¡°

 At The Gate

    They dropped out of hyperspace a few sub-light flight hours away from the wormhole. Not only did the Aerax enforce a sub-light zone roughly a dozen light minutes around it, getting too close to a wormhole while in hyperspace was also risky. Like warp bubbles, wormholes went beyond normal space.


    The crew had switched the Rusty Bolt for a different ship that Yezz had organized. The Grimalkin was nearly spherical, half the size of their own ship, and had a high speed but short range hyperdrive. Most of its volume was dedicated to propulsion systems, with a small cargo hold. In other words: It was designed for wormhole transits, where the cost depended on the volume of an enclosing sphere.


    ?Still gives me shivers.¡°, Red remarked as the gate appeared on their sensor display.


    ?But why?¡°, Twitch asked after setting the autopilot on course, ?You¡¯ve said it some times before but we never used one, so I didn¡¯t ask.¡°


    They stood up and walked through the doorway on the right side of the bridge, where a small mess hall was located. The crew area of the Grimalkin was small, another testimony to the fact that the ship was built for short travels of a week or two at most.


    ?Not really sure, Twitch.¡°, the captain replied, ?In part because I can wrap my head around warp bubbles, but I can¡¯t grasp what a wormhole actually is. Sure, I¡¯ve seen some of the math, and it really didn¡¯t help at all.¡°, she let out a small laugh, sitting down at the table where Grubs was finishing his meal. ?I mean, it shouldn¡¯t be difficult. We have theoretical papers about wormholes from the pre-space age, long before we made first contact with aliens. I think it was Morris and Torn or Thorne or something. We had to learn about them back in flight school theory, but I forgot. But once us humans were interstellar and could do actual research, we just failed completely. Warp bubbles we got. We still don¡¯t have the tech to create hyper cores, but we understand the theory, we can describe it mathematically, we¡¯re just cave men faced with a metal weapon - no matter how well they understands it, they just doesn¡¯t have the tech to create one. But wormholes? Total mystery to this day.¡°


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    ?We¡¯re not alone in that, if it helps.¡°, Twitch remarked from the galley, pouring himself a glass of water. ?Lots of more advanced races haven¡¯t figured out wormholes. The dozen or so species that have keep it a secret. A very lucrative secret for some of them. Still, doesn¡¯t explain being so uneasy.¡°


    ?Hm, yes. There¡¯s some more. I don¡¯t get why black holes cause spaghettification and wormholes don¡¯t. At least the ones large enough for travel should, for all I know.¡°


    ?That¡°, Grubs interrupted, ?is part of what they work out when they structure a wormhole. You know, structure it into a gate.¡°


    ?And that¡°, Red picked up his words, ?is another part of it. Our hyperdrives we control, we program. When you fly into a wormhole, you¡¯re at the mercy of some alien you can¡¯t understand if you tried and if they decide to blow you up because today is explode-a-human day or whatever, they can just do that.¡°


    ?There hasn¡¯t been an¡­¡°, Twitch started


    ?¡­incident for thirty years.¡°, Red completed the sentence, with a slightly annoyed tone of voice. ?You¡¯ve said that at least five times the last week while we bubbled here.¡°


    ?Sorry, captain.¡°


    ?It¡¯s ok. I should stop being a child about it. Anyway, in an hour or so we¡¯ll discuss prices and other details with the birds.¡°, Red finished, using the derogatory name for the Aerax race.

 Wormhole

    The Grimalkin was a dark shadow gliding through space, now just under ten light minutes away from the wormhole. Nothing was visible in 3D space, but the gravity sensors had picked it up long ago. Without a nearby sun, the space ship was completely black on the outside, with no position or other lights on it. With the distances and speeds involved in even sub-light space travel, visual navigation was anyway impossible.


    The giant space station ahead, halfway between them and the wormhole, was likewise just a patch of darkness over the stars, but the holographic display in the cockpit was showing it clear as day, projected above the instruments and computer screens.


    They had received a first message a few seconds ago and the computer was busy translating it. Red, Twitch and Grubs were impatiently waiting for the output in the cockpit of the small ship, the silence filled with the humming of the ship and the faint processing sounds of the computers. The design was much newer and less patchwork than the Rusty Bolt, but Grubs was unhappy about not being able to fiddle around in the engines and other machinery. At least he had a proper seat at the console, unlike the Rusty Bolt that had only two seats at the cockpit.


    A screen flickered to life with the translated message.


    ?There we are. Terms and conditions of worm gate transit, a price formula and accepted trade goods and currencies. Ah, and also a warning that hostile actions in the vicinity will result in blacklisting.¡°, Twitch summed up what had appeared before them. He tasked the ship AI with the price calculation, given the Grimalkin¡¯s known dimensions.


    ?Five tons of Ice VII. We have sixteen tons in the hold. Excellent, we¡¯re good.¡°, Red exclaimed, a determined glimmer in both her natural and her bionic eye. She entered an answer to the Aerax, offering the Ice VII which Yezz had told them was always something the Aerax were happy to accept.¡°


    ?Imagine we get that payout in intergalactic credits.¡°, Grubs remarked. ?We could pay for worm hole transit with cash instead of lugging around stuff.¡°


    A glance at Red shut him up. Her expression made it clear that she was a fan of credits, but definitely not of wormholes. Even if it would greatly increase the range of their activities.


    The alien had answered in the affirmative within the minute, sending over coordinates for the inspection station.


    ?Inspection?¡°, Red wondered, gripping the metal armrests of her seat.


    ?Mostly size measurements.¡°, Twitch explained factually. ?What?¡°, he exclaimed as the other two gave him questioning looks. ?I read up on wormholes before going into one. You didn¡¯t?¡° An awkward pause ensued, then Twitch continued: ?So, this inspection is a safety precaution in case someone understates their dimensions or makes a unit conversion error. From what I understand, there¡¯s an ugly outcome if the gate opens up too small, and a huge waste of energy if too large.¡°


    It took them two more hours of flight, deceleration and maneuvering to arrive at the coordinates they had been given. The Aerax space station was easily twice the size as Binary Bloom, and unlike the pirate outpost almost spherical. A hint that it could travel through the worm gate itself if necessary. The coordinates were a spot in space about a light second away from the station, and the holo-display indicated that a much smaller satellite was located there, with what were obviously various scanners and sensors on its outside.


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    With a shudder, the Grimalkin came to a relative stop, hanging in front of the inspection station. Most of the control lights dimmed out and the hum of the engine came to a stop. The air suddenly smelled stale.


    The inspection itself took less than a minute, and only a small part of it was using visible light to measure the hull of their ship. A dozen drones had disconnected from the inspection satellite and circled around them, probing the Grimalkin from all sides. All of which happened in the total silence of space that they were so familiar with.


    Then, the receiver came alive again with a few beeps and flickering lights as it translated the inspection result: ?Uh¡°, Twitch read, ?It claims that we have misstated the dimensional extent of our ship.¡°


    ?What?¡°, Grubs leaned forward in his chair, his cybernetic arm protesting the sudden movement with a faint screech.


    ?They say that our 3D dimensions were correctly given, but we omitted our size in the 7th dimension.¡°


    ?We did what?¡°, Red wondered, her expression of surprise quickly changing into one of understanding. ?The hyper core is not active, is it?¡°


    ?Definitely not, made sure of that.¡°, Grubs answered her. ?And besides, it would reach into the 4th to 6th dimension if it were.¡°


    ?Normally.¡°, Red replied, with a firm voice.


    Twitch had continued reading: ?By the measurements given here, the 7th dimensional component isn¡¯t that big, adding about 10% to our calculated size. But it does add another dimensional multiplier, so the revised price is 7.6 tons of Ice VII.¡°


    ?Uncomfortably close to half of our total, but still within budget.¡°, Red gave the news some thought. ?Well, as long as we have enough for the return trip, it¡¯s not like we have much choice. Let them know we agree and prepare the cargo transfer.¡°


    Grubs looked at the other two with raised eyebrows and a frown. ?We¡¯re just ignoring that?¡°


    Red met his gaze, a wry smile playing on her lips. ?Is there anything else we could do, Grubs? We are making this trip so that someone tells us what the heck we are dealing with. Besides¡°, her voice dropped to a low murmur, ?what other options except carrying on do we have?¡°


    ?We could tell Yezz to make the trip herself.¡°, Grubs trailed off. ?I mean. Shouldn¡¯t this bother us?¡°


    Red let out something that sounded like a squeak and laughed. ?More than going through a hole in space that we don¡¯t even begin to understand?¡°


    ?Fair point.¡°, Grubs conceded, his frown slowly dissolving.


    Twitch turned to them, injecting: ?It also doesn¡¯t seem to worry the Aerax, except for the additional volume.¡° His fingers were dancing over the console without him looking at it, instructing loading robots down in the cargo bay to prepare the required amount of Ice.


    Red and Grubs slowly let go of each other¡¯s gaze. Red admitted: ?I don¡¯t feel good about this whole thing, to be honest. Maybe my worry about wormholes has made me ignore other things that should indeed bother us.¡°


    Grubs moved to meet her argument half-way: ?It hasn¡¯t blown up on us yet, and the aliens that understand about higher dimensions aren¡¯t telling us to get the damn thing out of here. It¡¯s probably not immediately dangerous.¡°


    ?Trust me, Grubs.¡°, Red put a hand on the mechanic¡¯s shoulder: ?If we could¡¯ve figured this out on Bloom, we would¡¯ve done that. But our home is a pirate outpost. It has neither the equipment nor the specialists for anything like that.¡°


    Grubs grunted an affirmative, then looked down to his boots. ?It still bothers me. But that all makes sense. And no, I don¡¯t have a better idea than seeing this through.¡°


    ?Neither do I.¡°, Captain Red agreed. ?And I hope this is all worth it in the end.¡°

 Gate Transit

    Two black shadows suddenly turned into brightly illuminated artificial objects hanging in space against the backdrop of the stars.


    One, a patched-up junk of a spaceship with several parts clearly bolted and welded additionally, but on second glance sporting a surprisingly powerful engine, had its name painted in large letters on both sides: Grimalkin.


    The other, a gigantic sphere sporting a pristine metallic sheen and antennas of various sizes sticking out was of obvious alien design, carefully built to exact specifications and just as carefully maintained. It appeared as if it had just come from the factory and glinted in the artificial light emitting from an opening along its equator large enough for the Grimalkin to fly through.


    The light was aimed at a nondescript point in space just ahead of the patched-up vessel, where an especially astute observer might notice the stars in the background warped and stretched ever so slightly around a central point, which seemed entirely empty.


    This central void was now swallowing the light streaming from the wormgate station. At the same time it expanded. The more bright light flowed into the black void, the larger it became.


    From the side, one might have noticed that the void also stretched out towards the Grimalkin like a hungry mouth reaching for a meal. As the darkness reached the ship, at first nothing seemed to happen, the void flowing around the outside of the human spacecraft. As the void began to close around it, the ship seemed to stretch in the direction of the original void-point, a trick of perception and warping in space.


    Inside the Grimalkin, the only occurrence throughout all of this was that the stars slowly disappeared from the viewports. Once they had all gone, the ship began to vibrate slightly and the outside world was replaced with swirling colors of purple, blue and red mixing and weaving into strands of ghostly apparitions. An unnerving silence enveloped the craft.


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    The sensor output was going wild, showing nothing at all at times, impossible readings at others, or imaginary objects speeding past. Twitch knew that none of these were actual sensor readings, but simply the result of the sensors being unable to make sense of the warped space the ship was moving through. It still made him grab the armrests of his chair and hold on to them. He stopped himself from fiddling with the sensor controls, knowing no matter what he set them to, they would not relieve him with sensical results.


    Red, meanwhile, was calm in the way people who had expected the terrible were when it finally arrived. Never taking her eyes off the sensor displays, but gripping the edge of the console until her knuckles turned white, and forgetting to blink until her eyes were dry, she sat frozen in her seat, like a deer caught in the headlights.


    Grubs was the least affected. When the vibrations started he looked around, dazzled and trying to make out the source. Like the others, he dared not leave his seat during the transit, even though the ship was stable and upright, the artificial gravity working perfectly.


    After what seemed to be an eternity that did little to calm their nerves, the shapes and colors began to fade away, and soon after they found themselves motionless near a similar megastructure, with only the different stars in the background showing that they were hundreds of light years away from their previous location. The clock showed that barely an hour had passed.


    Grubs went to work, inspecting the engineering screens and soon reporting: ?No damage, all systems normal.¡°


    Twitch¡¯s fingers were flying here and there over the two keyboards and three screens in front of him, where prominent stars were identified and their relative positions and distances calculated to determine their current location in the galaxy.


    ?Looks like we arrived as promised, captain.¡°, Twitch summed up the result the ship AI had estimated.


    ?Captain?¡°, he added after two seconds, looking to his right.


    Red shook off the paralysis and let go of the console, straightening her spine.


    ?Good, good.¡°, she said coarsely. ?Let¡¯s get out of here. Twitch, set course for the Chromatica System. Grubs, make those engines burn.¡°

 Chroma

    The Grimalkin emerged from hyperspace on the fringes of the Chromatica system, in order to announce its presence to the local authorities. From this distance, the three suns were lost in the backdrop of stars. Even optical zoom only made them an elongated blob of light. The closest planet was a gas giant, its surface swirling with hues of grey, crimson and dirty white.


    Their contact with the border patrol was short and routine, and within minutes the ship went back into hyperspace, towards the approach coordinates they had received. The hyperdrive barely warmed up on the trip inside the solar system. Compared to interstellar distances it was barely a short step. Just a few seconds later the Grimalkin materialized back in normal space, this time two light seconds away from Chroma IV, just outside the orbit of its small moon.


    The main spectacle, however, was not the blue and green planet below, it was the tripple stars in the distance. Chromatica A, a golden orb, a G8V main sequence yellow star was the brightest. It was accompanied by two others. Chromatica B was a K-type star, cooler and redder and slightly larger, while Chromatica C was by far the largest but also less bright than the others, swollen due to having exhausted most of its hydrogen. A blue glowing B-type star.


    Together, they bathed Chroma IV in ever-shifting light, and radiation. Radiation that was safely diverted by the planet¡¯s powerful magnetic field, into constant auroras that danced near its poles in vibrant curtains of green and violet. It was indeed a sight to behold.


    Twitch and the ship AI were already exchanging navigation vectors with a space station at the L5 point, a stable position at the moon¡¯s orbit. Chroma IV was a trade hub, but the Grimalkin was not registered to any of the companies or planetary governments frequenting it, so they had to pass through border patrol before receiving landing permissions.


    It took an hour for them to stop near the space station, dock with a patrol shuttle and go through a routine customs inspection. Alien technology was a more than welcome trade good on all human planets and thus almost never subject to tariffs and commonly granting a streamlined customs process. After a bit of paperwork they were on their way, landing coordinates and de-orbit vectors in the navigation computer and a notice about their arrival time sent through the comms to their contact.


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    Another hour later, they were coming down through the atmosphere, a small amount of fiery plasma forming on the outside of the Grimalkin. The ship was not built for atmospheric flight. It had the aerodynamics of a giant ball, because that was exactly what it was. In essence, the Grimalkin moved into orbit above the spaceport, matched the planet¡¯s rotation and then simply dropped down, slowing its descent and adjusting its position using its thrusters. It touched down at a cargo spaceport a short distance outside one of Chroma IVs larger cities shortly after dawn.


    They stepped out of the Grimalkin, blinking in the unfamiliar sunlight. Grubs took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the sweet, non-recycled air. ?Fresh air.¡°, he breathed, with a rare grin. Despite the faint smell of burnt propellant and spaceport chemicals, it was a more than welcome change to all the ships and space stations they spent most of their lives in.


    Red shouldered her pack and gestured towards a sleek, white car approaching their position. ?We''ve got a hotel at the edge of the city," she announced. ?Halfway between here and the center. Should be a short drive.¡°


    They put their luggage in the trunk and got into the car, the inside a cozy contrast to its nondescript exterior, with brown synthetic leather and blue fabric. The autopilot had been programmed by the hotel and took them straight to their lodging. During the ride, they were all glued to the windows, taking in the unfamiliar sights of open landscapes and distant horizons, sun and clouds in the sky and high-rise buildings in the distance. They had been on planets before, even on inhabited ones. But it was a rare opportunity and they intended to make the most of it, taking in all the sights, sounds and smells they had all but forgotten. They enjoyed every minute of their ride.


    Soon, the open landscape was replaced by suburban housing. Scattered houses with large gardens that slowly became smaller as they came closer to the city. Then the car took a turn to the left and drove into what could have been a small town but was probably the middle of a city district. The skyscrapers, now to their right, were already not far away. The car slowed down as they entered a plaza, monorail station on one hand and a few five and six story buildings on the other, their hotel among them. It was now proper morning and the plaza was buzzing with people, some on their way to work, some on their way to the nearby shops, some enjoying the warm spring day in the cafe that occupied the central area of the plaza.


    A service robot was unloading their luggage as they exited the car, and the sounds and smells of the city rolled over them. Checking in was quick, and after a quick refresh in their rooms, they went outside to visit that cafe. Having a snack under the open sky was as amazing to them as a trip to the moon was to a surface dweller.

 Corruption

    The next morning the hotel served its primary purpose for their mission: As an inconspicuous  location to meet with Dr. Quennell Scotcher, according to his business card, the man Yezzania had connected them with.


    ?I will need size and weight of your cargo to arrange the transport.¡°, the scientist came to the point immediately. He was dressed in a standard business attire fashionable on Chroma IV: White trousers, a colorful vest over a black shirt, top button opened, a thin scarf of synthetic silk around the neck with both ends tucked through the vest¡¯s arm holes and hanging down his sides. He was also wearing the augmented reality glasses they had noticed on other people on the planet. A fashion statement as Chroma IV was certainly connected well enough to import AR contact lenses from Earth.


    ?I can arrange for an analysis, conducted by me personally, that won¡¯t appear in our official records.¡°


    He looked around the room expectantly. They had met in Red¡¯s hotel room, which had a comfortable size for one person staying a few nights, but barely enough space and definitely not enough seats for the four of them. Red and Dr. Scotcher were sitting in the two armchairs near the window, Twitch was half leaning against, half sitting on the small desk, and Grubs was standing near the entrance.


    ?Glad to hear that, Dr. Scotcher.¡°, Red began. The scientist interrupted her with a sly smile: ?Please, everyone calls me Quenn.¡°


    Red gave this is a second and decided to follow the lead: ?Very well. Quenn, that¡¯s good.¡° She picked a folded piece of paper out of a pocket on the inside of her vest. ?Here are the exact dimensions. It should fit into a standard truck with some room to spare. And here,¡° she pulled out another folded paper from the same pocket, ?are the customs documents for one hypercore, all official and proper.¡°


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    Quenn carefully checked both documents, nodding several times. ?Yes¡°, he said finally, folding the papers up again and putting them away into a small tablet case he had brought. ?It looks legitimate and convincing. Very refreshing to work with professionals. Now, for the pickup and discussion of details, I can only get guest passes for two of you. Three would be suspicious, no shipping company these days sends three people when one is enough and two is plenty.¡°


    The three looked at each other, exchanging glances and the two men finally resting their gazes on their captain. Red had a sliver of annoyance in her voice, barely detectable if one didn¡¯t know her well, as she responded: ?Fine. Get us passes for Mrs. Rodriguez and Mr. O¡¯Malley.¡°


    ?Are those¡°, the scientist remarked ?your real names? I¡¯d advise against using those.¡°


    ?Why not?¡°, Red questioned, surprised. ?We landed under our real names, booked our hotel with our real names, it¡¯s not like we could hide or that it means much to anyone once we¡¯ve left.¡°


    ?True¡°, Quenn agreed, ?But until then it does. Someone could connect the dots quickly and the spaceport logs would lead straight to you. Or to me.¡°


    ?So would the travel logs.¡°, Grubs jumped in.


    ?Travel logs?¡°, Quenn looked at him, wondering.


    ?Robotaxi protocol, camera surveillance, hotel entrance and exit logs, road and passage scanners, you know what I mean.¡°


    ?No, I don¡¯t.¡°, Quenn answered. ?I really don¡¯t.¡°


    ?Chroma IV is a Freeport¡°, Twitch intervened. ?There¡¯s no continuous surveillance like on other planets. The spaceport probably doesn¡¯t have a record beyond our manifest, and the hotel doesn¡¯t report our stay to the local government.¡°


    ?Of course not!¡°, Quenn said with conviction. He had spent most of his life on Chroma IV and had only visited another planet once, without noticing the intricate tracking there.


    ?Interesting.¡°, Red said quietly, and without saying it out loud her two companions understood that in her thoughts she completed the sentence with ?Almost like Binary Bloom. Or any pirate outpost.¡°


    Quenn changed the subject: ?Since this might well take more than one night, do you care for some suggestions on what to do while you are here? I have a friend who can get you into some of the more exclusive locations on short notice, and for a very moderate tip.¡°

 Binary Siege

    The sun was setting over the capital city of Erulas, outside the president¡¯s office at the top of the government skyscraper, the orange light flowing through the large glass panels.


    Inside, president Vance was pacing behind her desk, staring intently at a hologram projection fed in through the large hyperspace communications array on the roof above her. The man whose head was floating on Vance¡¯s table said with a slight irritation in his voice: ?Again, I am not ?in charge¡° of Binary Bloom station. I¡¯m merely managing some administrative tasks. I¡¯m more of a janitor than a president.¡°


    ?Mr. Hallows, my men on the ground assert me that you have been named multiple times as the person in charge of running this little den. So unless you can convincingly point to someone else, I¡¯ll deal with you.¡°


    The latency to the pirate outpost was just under two seconds thanks to the powerful planetary transmitter on Erulas. Combined with a bit of AI trickery it almost felt like a planetary video call.


    The hologram paused for a brief moment of thought, before giving in: ?I guess as the ancient saying goes, the buck stops here. Your troops have caught quite the ruckus on the station, and if it hadn¡¯t been for their persuasive explosives, we¡¯d have blocked them off in the docking bay. At least they were smart enough to keep to the main corridor and enter only the control room. Keep them on a leash, because by now the residents of Bloom are armed and ready to defend what little they have.¡°


    Amara Vance studied the hologram for a few seconds, but the bandwidth wasn¡¯t sufficient to resolved the tiny details she was looking for. The man didn¡¯t show expressions or gestures that would let her know about his thoughts and emotions. Clearly someone used to negotiations and bluffs.


    ?Thank you.¡°, she continued, ?I appreciate your cooperation. This all can be over quickly and everyone can get back to normal. There¡¯s just a stolen item that we must take back, that is all.¡°


    ?Stolen item?¡°, Nicodemus Hallows¡¯ hologram said with an overly exaggerated a fake expression of surprise. Then he surprised the president with a clever twist: ?Stolen from you?¡°


    Amara kept her face under control, and the AI filter to smooth out any giveaways would do the rest. The benefit of owning the broadcasting equipment. A barely audible hum filled her office, the large desk standing in its center with shelves filling one wall and a small conference table in front of the other.


    ?Not directly.¡°, she answered truthfully, ?But I am acting on behalf of the rightful owners.¡°


    ?Do they know that?¡°, the man pushed again, sharply.


    Amara let his question hang in the air for a second. Then she shot back: ?What gave you the impression that you are asking the questions in this conversation?¡° She left the implication unspoken in the silence that followed her rhetorical question, knowing that several marines were in the room with the pirate governor.


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    ?Oh.¡°, he continued nonchalantly, barely missing a beat, ?Just the fact that I might have something that you want, and you don¡¯t know where it is and thus can¡¯t take it by force. Sure, you made a statement by sending two transports of troops, and of course our scanners have noticed your battleship cruising in the area. But that also tells me that what you are looking for is quite valuable to you. Too valuable to risk blowing it up in a silly attempt of military take-over. So¡°, he added with a sly grin, ?why don¡¯t we continue this as a proper barter? Tell me what you want and what you¡¯re willing to give, and I¡¯ll tell you my counter-offer.¡°


    The AI made sure the small twitch in Amara¡¯s eye was not transmitted. She caught herself, stepped forward and spoke in a confident voice: ?If I wanted to barter, I would have sent a diplomat, not a detachment of assault troops. Make no mistake, we could take what we want by force. We are simply offering you a once-off chance to hand it over without bloodshed. So tell me, Mr. Hallows, what do you know about a next-generation hyperdrive core, stolen from a Xylar ship a few weeks ago?¡°


    ?You mean the kind your government anonymously buys from us regularly?¡°, Nicodemus pushed again. Amara found his ability to take control of the conversation despite being in the clearly weaker position admirable. But she could not let him keep that advantage. ?The kind that some of the pirates under your roof would want to sell to the highest bidder, not some regular client. You and I both know that it is on the market. You can point me in the right direction, or my less diplomatic people can ask around until they¡¯ve found it.¡°. She was sure she had put just the right amount of stress on the ?ask¡° to make it clear what kind of asking she was insinuating.


    ?Well.¡°, he finally gave in, ?It¡¯s not as if I knew everything going on here, you know? Much of it, sure. But not every sale or offer. I¡¯ll have to ask around myself.¡°


    ?I¡¯ll make it worth your while. My troops will leave everyone in peace as long as I¡¯m convinced you are doing your part, and if the core turns up, they¡¯ll leave your station and maybe even buy some overpriced souvenirs on the way out. And we¡¯ll all forget this ever happened.¡°


    Amara was hoping she had read him right. She clenched her jaw while waiting for his answer. Maybe she had pushed too hard? Would it have been better to offer him an incentive instead? He just didn¡¯t strike her as the man out strictly for his personal profit.


    The hologram gave a nod. ?Give me a day or two. It¡¯s a big station and people are on edge now, with all these unannounced visitors and all.¡°


    She held back a sigh of relief. ?50 hours, Mr. Hallows. See you earlier, I hope.¡°


    Terminating the call, she sat down in her chair and leaned back. The game was far from over, but that was one of the stations going according to plan. She was still waiting for the second commander to call from the other pirate outpost. They had been coordinated to dock at roughly the same time, just in case the pirates were updating each other on important events. She would play the same game with him, pretending to know for sure the hyperdrive core was on his base. Giving him a bit of the stick and offering a bit of carrot. She expected both of them to find what she was looking for, and at least one of them would try to sell her an ordinary hyper core. The real game had just begun.

 Interference

    ?The whole docking area of the station is crawling with troops!¡°, Elias whispered with urgency into the hyperspace comm unit hidden behind a fake wall in his private quarters. ?What the heck is Erulas thinking?¡°


    ?Desperation, I figure.¡°, the disembodied  voice of his contact officer answered. For security reasons, Elias had no idea what the other man¡¯s name or even rank was. If he was ever compromised, he couldn¡¯t give up information that he didn¡¯t have.


    Elias was livid, barely keeping his voice low, the metallic tang of recycled air he usually barely noticed biting in his throat. ?This isn¡¯t one of the planets. A show of force? Seriously? They¡¯re lucky nobody has decided to blow them up yet.¡°


    ?They are betting on pirates being cowards. Let¡¯s be honest, few of the people there are ready to die for the sake of the station. They¡¯ll defend their own, be it crew or property, but not start a battle with trained soldiers if neither of that¡¯s threatened.¡°


    Elias looked around nervously at ordinary sounds of activity from the nearby hallways. He was taking a considerable risk calling in from the station and not from a shuttle on the other side of planet Aethel as he usually did. But the situation left him no choice - marines occupied the docking bay and didn¡¯t let anyone launch.


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    ?Is HQ in contact with Erulas about this? Any of the backchannels maybe?¡°, he inquired, biting his upper lip.


    ?If so, nobody told me.¡°, the officer without a name answered after a brief moment of thought. ?I¡¯ll find out and come back to you. The usual spam message as a sign you should call me?¡°


    ?Yeah. Not sure how much Erulas is tapping into the station¡¯s communications.¡°


    Elias dropped the call and quickly put the wall covering the comm unit back into place. If anyone on or near the station was monitoring, they now knew that there were at least two hyperspace comms on Binary Bloom, even if they couldn¡¯t break the encrypted channel itself. They would not have pinpointed the exact location in this short time, however.


    He stood up and paced up and down in his quarters for a minute. They were spacious for the pirate outpost, a perk of having them at the far end, which suited him just right anyways. He was in the smallest room right now, furnished as an office and small library. Behind the single door was the living room, with attached sleeping room, kitchen and bathroom. All the heavy furniture in his quarters was fixed to either floor or walls. While the last time the gravity generators had failed on Binary Bloom was before he came to the station, his training had told him to be ready for all possible circumstances so that if it ever came to an attack or major sabotage on the station, he could act. For the same reason he had put the office into the room that had no windows, where most similar quarters on Bloom would have put the bed.


    He went to the living room, and continued onwards without stopping. ?Time to pay Yezz a visit.¡°, he grumbled to himself, grabbing a light jacket from the entryway on his way out into the pirate station.

 An Unstable Alliance

    Despite its small size, Dephyr had 70% of Earth gravity thanks to its dense core. On the horizon, the terraforming machines were belching out gas, and they would run for another 50 years or so. The planet had been habitable when humans discovered it, but needed some adjustments to make human life on the surface not just possible, but pleasurable. Oxygen content was still too high, resulting in constant wildfires and rapid corrosion. As a protection, the houses in Brodle, the capital city, were built with bricks and like most cities on the planet it was surrounded on one side by a river and on the other three by a canal dug as a fire-break. Much of the natural vegetation of Dephyr was very flammable, but also fast-growing. Wildfires, burnt landscape and regrowth cycles were as common as the seasons.


    Despite being the capital, Brodle had a frontier atmosphere to it, still growing into its space with numerous scattered construction sites. Not far from the river, in one of the older parts of the city, were several large buildings flying the flag of Dephyr as an indicator of their function as government buildings.


    A good distance away, near the northern canal and in an unremarkable neighborhood, a smaller building cowered between offices, with a small flag near the entrance, and a much smaller sign above: ?Intelligence Service Division¡°


    On its top floor, the 4th, a meeting room faced the small inner courtyard, tinted windows, three paneled against directional microphones. Within it, half a dozen officers and specialists in civilian office clothes, partially eaten take-out food on the table between computers and printouts. Above the table floated a holographic map of the Junkstorm.


    On one wall of the room, with nobody sitting on that side of the table, two displays of similar rooms were visible. On the left, president Vance was in the foreground, with her civilian and military advisors behind her. She represented the planet Erulas. On the right, a smaller situation room with only military personnel was visible, the command center on Dangorod. The military government of the planet was keeping things strictly on a need-to-know basis.


    ?So in summary¡°, president Vance¡¯s voice boomed from the display, ?The Qyrl and Xylars are not the only aliens who are more than a bit interested in these pirates and their haul.¡°


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    ?And your little expedition has turned up nothing?¡°, an elder statesman in the room on Dephyr added, dressed in well-made but understated civilian clothes, a folder on the table in front of him identifying the owner as ?Ansom Tike, Secretary of State for Alien Affairs¡°. He had a weathered face and the eyes of a man who has stared down more than one challenge of diplomacy.


    ?Of which¡°, a man with general insignia but no name tag on the Dangorod screen stated, ?we should have been informed earlier.¡° He was responding to the question that had been asked. Due to the one-and-a-half second latency between the planets, the introduction had not yet arrived at his side when he spoke. Speaking over each other was a common issue in interplanetary conferences.


    ?That unnecessary misunderstanding on that pirate outpost¡°, a man behind Amara Vance intervened. ?Black Sails¡°, the general interrupted, ?It has a name.¡° - ?whatever¡°, the other man continued, ?could have been easily avoided if you had told us that you have a man on the inside.¡°


    ?Couldn¡¯t coordinate with you on a mission we didn¡¯t know about.¡°, the general snapped back.


    ?Stop playing games.¡°, president Vance interrupted the two men, as much as interruption was possible with the communications lag, ?General, we all know that your spies whispered your people the details before the marines even left Erulas.¡°


    ?Negative, ma¡¯am.¡°, the military leader of the planet of Dangorod responded, ?Whatever you are insinuating, I¡°, he was interrupted by Vance, ?deny, dispute any knowledge of agents your intelligence services have running around on our planets, because diplomatically we are at peace and all that. We all here dance that dance every day.¡°


    ?If we could return to the matter at hand?¡°, the Secretary of State brought attention back, ?We have two alien races asking questions and sending probes and who knows what else, and one of them laughs about all but our mightiest battleships. In addition, at least one additional faction is actively scanning the Junkstorm with FTL trackers. This is far from a typical reaction to a little theft.¡°


    ?Our marines are at this very moment working on it.¡°, president Vance said calmly on the Erulas screen. ?We have several solid leads that we are investigating. Just like any other stolen alien tech, this one will appear on the black market sooner or later.¡°


    ?Can we make sure it will be sooner?¡°, secretary Tike asked, to multiple nods in the Dephyr situation room.


    ?As a strictly confidential information not to leave the room,¡°, the Dangorod general responded, ?our intelligence service has reported that they have placed generous buy offers on the market. We will let you all know if something turns up.¡°


    ?I hope so.¡°, Tike said plainly.

 Military Intelligence

    As the screen switched off, all eyes in the command center turned to General Montague Tebbs. He was a veteran of the Qyrl war and one of only a handful of fighter pilots who had more than one kill on their record. Three gold lightning bolt symbols commemorated his score, and only two other people had four of them. It had been a few decades, but Tebbs still remembered that his was the exception. More than half of the young pilots, and he had been young himself back then, never returned from their very first mission.


    ?Get me those monkeys from the intelligence branch.¡°, he growled. Then: ?No, wait. I¡¯ll fly over myself. Let them know I¡¯m coming and by the time I get there they better have some damn intel for me.¡°


    He left the room through the security gate, two armored doors with a small room between them that, he knew because he had personally ordered them to be installed, featured most detectors and scanners known to man behind the faux walls. The command center itself was not actually a part of the building it was in, but rather suspended inside of it, with specially constructed supports. It was as secure against eavesdropping as human technology could make it. There was only one room more secure than this one in the entire Junkstorm. He was heading there.


    An hour later, he walked through a similar gate into a similar room. The main difference was not visible from inside the room. In addition to all the measures of the command center, the intelligence service secrets room was not inside a building, it was inside an underground complex.


    The other difference was the man inside. Instead of a military uniform, he was wearing an ordinary business suit. In fact, if someone had been tasked with designing the most boring, average, not noteworthy business suit he would have come up with exactly this one. Not just his suit but his entire appearance made the man someone you would forget five seconds after meeting them. This was very much intentional.


    ?Norman¡°, General Tebbs began, ?tell me something I don¡¯t already know.¡° He sat down on one of the two couches facing each other across a low coffee table, the only furniture in the room. They filled it with a subtle smell of leather.


    ?Asking like that,¡°, Norman Jones, head of the Dangorod intelligence services, answered with an edge in his voice, ?implies you don¡¯t mean Erulas¡¯ marines shooting our agents in the field, I assume?¡°


    He slowly turned to face the table, and equally slowly moved to take a seat opposite the general.


    ?Wouldn¡¯t have happened if your agent hadn¡¯t run from their security check.¡°


    Jones raised an eyebrow in the way one does when a child says something silly. ?Those marines were about to blow my agent¡¯s cover in front of too many witnesses.¡°


    ?That wouldn¡¯t have been pretty, true. Is he going to be ok?¡°


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    Jones nodded, slowly, measured. ?He is recovering and should be able to walk again in a week or so. Dumb as the Erulas brutes are, they are good shooters, leg shot just like their training manuals say.¡°


    ?Good. Now as I said, tell me what you know. I come straight from a top-level meeting with the other planets and had the feeling I¡¯m the one knowing the least about anything. Your people have too many secrets, even from us. Your job is to get intel for all the government branches, not keep it for yourself.¡°, Tebbs pointed out, leaning forward.


    Jones leaned back on his couch, keeping his arms and hands at his sides, his body language a trained expression of nothing. ?Officially, Montague, we let you know what you need to know. Between us two, that is often less than we would admit. Erulas blindsided us. We of course knew they were sending out marines to somewhere, but not where, and we were mislead about the timeline.¡°


    ?Their counter-intelligence getting better?¡°


    ?Afraid so.¡°


    ?So all we know is that some pirates nabbed a piece of alien tech that everyone wants to get their hands on?¡°


    Jones nodded again, slowly, ?Including all three planets in the Junkstorm. Thank you for confirming that information. I will need to pass it on to one of our agents who seems to be close.¡°


    ?More spies among the pirates?¡°


    Jones slightly tilted his head. ?Of course. But according to his reports, the crew that caused all the trouble had left the pirate outpost ¡­ ¡°


    ?Black Sails¡°, the general interrupted


    ?Not that one.¡°, Jones corrected him, ?The other one. Binary Bloom. Anyway, they left well before the marines arrived.¡°


    ?Wait¡°, General Tebbs wondered, his brows furrowed, ?So the core isn¡¯t on either of the pirate stations at all and Erulas is chasing ghosts?¡°


    ?Unknown. We know the pirate crew left, our man on the station could not say if they took the core with them or it is still on the station. According to his intel, they will be back soon, left their own ship behind and took another one. But yes, if Erulas thinks a bunch of marines can find a hyper core on a space station, they are fools. These things are typically the size of a big wardrobe. Especially on that station, with the derelict alien hull around, there are endless places where it could be.¡°


    Tebbs sighed and leaned back again, his eyes wandering around the room for a moment. ?So in summary, we have nothing except aliens breathing down our necks.¡°


    ?We have only a few sources outside the Junkstorm. That by pure chance one of them comes across this specific crew is highly unlikely. Nevertheless, what we know about the three of them has been sent out to all our agents.¡°


    ?And your attempts to just buy the damn thing?¡°


    ?Our agent on Binary Bloom says that their fence has indicated interest, but has another buyer that has priority. He is working on convincing her otherwise.¡°


    ?When I mentioned we had put an offer on the market in the inter-planet meeting, neither of the others said that they had done the same.¡°


    ?Might be a wealthy and well-connected individual. Might be aliens. Pirates tend to deal with whoever is paying enough and not asking questions.¡°


    Tebbs sent the intelligence chief a penetrating gaze. ?Double our offer. I¡¯ll find the money in my budget somewhere. If everyone is so interested, there must be a reason. I want to know what it is.¡°


    Jones raised his eyebrows again, just slightly. ?I was not aware the military has a budget in intergalactic credits.¡°


    ?The¡­ what?¡°, confusion rolled over Tebbs¡¯ face like a wave, then disappeared. ?Good to know the intelligence branch does. Why intergalactic?¡°


    ?It is what their mystery buyer offered. We needed to match it.¡°

 Interlude

    Two days on a solid planet felt like a luxury to the crew of the Rusty Bolt. Sure, Aethel was just outside the Binary Bloom station and shuttles for a quick dip on the planet surface were relatively cheap to rent, but while habitable, Aethel was lifeless aside from some early-evolution plants. If you wanted to sip a cocktail on the beach, you had to bring your own.


    And Chroma IV was a special place. On their first day, the three began with a trip to a crystal-clear like surrounded on three sides by steep but short cliffs. Grubs, who had the most zero-G experience of them, enjoyed the dive especially, with a familiar and yet unfamiliar feeling of buoyancy combined with the water¡¯s resistance. The colorful sky danced on the tiny waves the wind blew across the lake.


    That same afternoon, they were scrambling up a rocky trail, boots crunching on the red sand. The view from the peak was breathtaking - a sprawling city to one side, under a vast horizon, a sight unimaginable in the cramped confines of a ship or even a space station. The three suns cast a multi-colored glow over the landscape, and just walking under a tree canopy and across wild meadows was a simple and yet fulfilling pleasure to them.


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    Their muscles were sore from the day¡¯s activities when they arrived back at the hotel in the evening, and a lavish meal in a nearby restaurant finished off the day, with all three eagerly heading for an early rest.


    The next day was a stark contrast. They went into the city proper, visiting the local sights just like proper tourists did. The museums were impressive, as were the open-sky markets. They split up that day, with Grubs donning a rented suit and visiting the grand opera house, while Twitch disappeared to a live show of a different kind of music. Red took herself to the local casino, winning some and losing some, but mostly enjoying the atmosphere and the occasional flirt at the bar.


    Dinner that night was a mixture of unfamiliar local foods, spiced meats and colorful vegetables that for once were not grown hydroponically. A sweet, fizzy drink left them all giggling, and the three suns setting behind the western mountains was a sight to behold, even if they only enjoyed it from the hotel¡¯s rooftop bar.

 Discovery

    ?This thing¡°, Dr. Scotcher welcomed them at the back entrance of the research building, ?needs to get off the planet. Immediately.¡°


    It was earliest morning. Only Chromatica B had barely begun to peek above the horizon, shining its crimson light over the city. It had still been dark when he had woken them up less than an hour ago and insisted that they come to get his lab results, right away.


    He ushered them inside while he was talking, and then down a corridor to a service elevator.


    ?What¡¯s the urgency?¡°, Twitch asked, rubbing the last bits of sleep out of his eyes.


    ?How well do you understand high-dimensional physics?¡°, was the response.


    ?Uh.¡°, Twitch grumbled, ?The basics they teach in school, plus a year of hyperspace navigation in flight school.¡°


    ?So, basically nothing.¡°, the scientist concluded. ?This way. Should be nobody in yet, but can¡¯t be entirely certain.¡° The other two followed them, not in the mood for many words.


    They entered the elevator and Dr. Scotcher held his batch to a reader before punching the button for the 6th floor.


    ?In very simple terms,¡°, he began the way lectures usually start, ?after humanity¡¯s first contact with aliens, we quickly figured out that there were three more space dimensions, working much like the three we are used to, except that their coupling with the time dimension is different, which is what allows us to exceed the speed of light in our dimensions by transposing into what is generally called hyperspace.¡°, he said while the elevator rose upwards, then added in the voice of a professor leaving the really tricky part as homework: ¡°I assume you know that much.¡°


    ?Yeah.¡°, Grubs mumbled, also still sleepy, ?And the 4th to 6th dimensions are the source of what before the space age was called dark matter and dark energy. They interact with our three dimensions only via gravity. Oh and before time was thought to be the 4th dimension.¡°


    ?Yes, yes.¡°, Scotcher interrupted, as the elevator doors opened and he walked briskly down a hallway, waving the others to follow. ?Now the 4th to 6th dimensions are something that we can just about understand. We have no senses to perceive them and, as one of the few intelligent races in the galaxy, no natural ability to interact with any of them. Even the Qyrl can reach into at least the 4th dimension!¡°, he said with a tone of exasperation.


    ?That¡¯s why humans were late to discover FTL travel, yes we know. Don¡¯t have to rub it in, that¡¯s basic history.¡°


    ?Now¡°, Scotcher continued, ignoring Grubs¡¯ remark, ?the 7th and 8th dimension, they are an entirely different story. Only a few aliens have mastered them, and our scientific understanding of them can essentially be summed up as we have nothing but wild guesses. They might be Higgs condensates, but that like all other theories would defy our understanding of physics entirely. We can press buttons on machines built by aliens and something happens, but most of what seven dimensional machines do, well how I can put this? It is not that we don¡¯t understand it. It violates our understanding. For all we know, it shouldn¡¯t work. And don¡¯t even get me started on dimension eight, even most of the aliens don¡¯t get that one. Causality, locality, reality, even math appears to work differently.¡°


    ?Enough science-babble.¡°, Red interrupted, by now being awake and annoyed. ?Tell us why this couldn¡¯t wait until at least breakfast.¡°


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    ?Here¡°, the scientist said, opening the door to his laboratory, ?To the right is a room we can talk in.¡°


    They piled into a small room adjacent to the laboratory itself, through an unusually thick doorway. The room had a small, square table with two chairs looking lost in the far corner, no windows and the cold and bright ceiling light common to all offices in the galaxy. The walls had an unusual pattern of diagonal squares, like a chain-link fence.


    ?Sweet.¡°, Twitch exclaimed, gave his smartwatch a glance and pursing his lips while nodding appreciatively. ?A room-sized Faraday cage.¡°


    ?Yes¡°, Dr. Scotcher commented, ?We use it for experiments sensitive to electro-magnetic interference. But most of the time it is empty. Anyways,¡°, he closed the door while speaking, ?here¡¯s what I found out about your item. Well, we found out. This was well beyond my own abilities and I had to call in a couple favors to get additional expertise working on it. Tell Yezz that¡¯ll be reflected in the bill.¡°


    He moved towards the table and pulled it out of the corner, the table legs screeching on the floor. He grabbed a small tablet from a pocket in his jacket and placed it on the table, pressing a button. Two seconds later, a holographic display formed above the tablet, barely visible in the bright light. Scotcher went back to the door and adjusted the ceiling lights until the hologram could be made out more clearly. It showed a cutaway of the hyperdrive core, with all the parts they were more or less familiar with. In addition, an animated translucent line of some thickness led away from it, upwards, fading out a small distance above the core itself. A little further along the now invisible line, a single question mark hung in the air.


    ?While this item is a fully functional hyper core, it is also something else. From what I have seen in the engineering work, it appears to be a prototype or one of a small batch production, maybe for field testing. The line you see is a projection, it doesn¡¯t actually lead into any 3D dimension.¡°


    ?The seven-dimensional p¡­¡°, Twitch exclaimed,  stopping himself.


    Dr. Scotcher whirled around to him. ?You knew about this?¡°


    Twitch twisted nervously, avoiding the other man¡¯s gaze. ?Well¡°, he began, ?Not exactly. We just¡­¡°, he shot Red a quick glance, and the captain picked up, continuing for him: ?The Aerax billed us extra for a 7th dimension. That is all we know.¡°


    The scientist sighed. ?Could¡¯ve saved me half a day of work if you told me. Oh well. Now, where was I? Ah yes, so there is a fragment of the device that is located in the 7th dimension. It is always there, like a part of the machine. It¡¯s not a hyperdrive element or part of a dimensional shift. For lack of a better term, me and my colleagues have dubbed it a dimensional anchor.¡°


    ?And what does it do?¡°, Grubs asked, with a clear stress on the final word that managed to put his impatience into just one syllable.


    Without a hint of embarrassment, Dr. Scotcher answered: ?We don¡¯t know for sure. Can¡¯t even think of an experiment to find out definitely. All we have is a guess based on our observations and measurements.¡°


    He left a short pause, either for effect or to sort his thoughts.


    ?It stabilizes the Higgs field around a high-dimensional object traveling through hyperspace, by locking in an arbitrary multi-dimensional space-time point and creating its own co-moving reference frame.¡°


    ?Right.¡°, Red said after another short pause, this one definitely for thoughts. ?Now say that again in a language normal people understand.¡°


    ?It¡°, Dr. Scotcher began slowly, struggling for words, ?could allow the Xylars or really anyone using it to cut through the Junkstorm. Or any of the other chaotic regions that provide a sanctuary to the human race.¡°


    The silence was deafening as the crew took in the implications of this discovery.


    ?A weapon against humanity?¡°, Grubs finally wondered.


    ?Only as a side-effect, probably.¡°, Scotcher replied. ?If we are right then its most likely purpose is to allow hyperspace travel right through such regions instead of around them. It could significantly speed up travel along some of the main trade routes in the galaxy. The details are in the full science report. Here is the data stick. Take it to Yezz, she will know someone who can explain it.¡°


    ?An innocent improvement to the aliens,¡°, Red said thoughtfully, ?but an existential threat to even the meager place humans have in the galaxy. Not to mention the Xylars will want their research prototype back.¡°


    ?And¡°, Grubs added, ?unless this one is unique, they have the means to come and get it.¡°


    Scotcher nodded. ?And now you understand why I want this thing off-planet, immediately. Endangering the entire Chromatica system is way outside my job description.¡°

 Stranded

    Outside the Grimalkin, space was black. Mostly the deep darkness sprinkled with distant stars kind of black, but to one side it was absolute nothingness. The ship was orbiting a dormant black hole, one that had little matter nearby to swallow and thus was not surrounded by an accretion disc.


    The instruments in the empty cockpit showed the Grimalkin¡¯s orbit and the event horizon. They had chosen the ISCO, still a safe distance away from that point of no return, but as close to the black hole as possible while still maintaining a stable orbit. That meant they didn¡¯t need to constantly fire the thruster to maintain the orbit, making them as invisible as possible to anyone scanning the area. For the same reason, all systems had been shut down or turned to minimum.


    They were huddled around a table in the small mess room connected to the bridge. Red put her mug down with some force, the sound filling the otherwise eerily quiet vessel. ?I am not¡°, she said, with a very strong emphasis on the ?not¡°, ?bringing this thing back to Bloom. Every child knows how the Qyrl war went, and they are 4D creatures. The Xylars are 7D. Seven. They can probably reach out and grab this dimensional anchor thing with their bare hands. Heck, for all we know they bolted it on with some glue and tape, and we need special labs and experts just to take a look at it.¡°


    Grubs was listening patiently, despite the captain having interrupted him. Twitch watched on absent-mindedly, lost in thoughts. When Red had ended, Grubs picked up again ?Captain, I don¡¯t disagree with that. Not at all. Just, we can¡¯t sit here forever. Might as well turn left and fly right into that ex-sun.¡°


    ?Contact Yezz and set up a rendezvous point somewhere in deep space?¡°, came the distant, uncertain voice of Twitch who was half speaking, half thinking aloud.


    Grubbs nodded vehemently. ?That. Totally. Get rid of the thing, collect a nice pay-out, not involve Bloom. I¡¯m with Twitch.¡°


    Red looked at the two men, her fingers slightly tapping on the table. ?Would be nice to be rich again for a couple months, sure. I¡¯m just thinking - if that prototype ends up in the wrong hands, alien battleship will slice through the Junkstorm and put an end to not just to Bloom but the entire Junkstorm. And after that maybe the entire human race.¡°


    ?So we toss it into the black hole?¡°, Grubs was on the edge of his seat, ?No pay, unhappy Yezz, and we¡¯d need to score a new heist pretty soon to pay the bills.¡°


    Red shook her head. ?I don¡¯t think it is that easy. I¡¯m still sure the Xylars want it back, and if we tell them we tossed it out, they¡¯ll believe we¡¯re just hiding it on some space rock, moon, whatever. I¡¯d do the same in their place.¡°


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    ?Also, the rumor mill says,¡°, Twitch said, shoulders slumping. ?that the Xylars are starting to wonder how human pirates have jury-rigged dimensional shears to drop just a part of a ship into normal space, instead of the whole thing. They¡¯d take apart both us and the Rusty Bolt.¡°


    A short pause settled over the mess, silence filling the room apart from the barely audible hum of the life support systems in the ship¡¯s belly. It was moving along its orbit, teetering between the nothingness of the singularity and the void of deep space.


    Red spoke out after a long few seconds. ?That settles it, then.¡°. Both men looked at her quizzically. ?We have two potential buyers. One from Yezz and another one from Elias, he spoke to me directly when I was walking with Twitch.¡°


    ?Elias?¡°, Twitch asked, ?The tinkerer? Didn¡¯t know he moonlights as a fence.¡°


    ?Sounded like a one-off, to be honest. I don¡¯t think he does that often. Anyway, my point is this: We jump back to the Junkstorm but stay away from Bloom. Contact Yezz and Elias and ask some questions about their buyers. Make sure this gets into the right hands. Pay is secondary, in either case we¡¯ll make good money.¡°


    Grubs scratched his chin, saying ?But what are ?good hands¡®? Who do you mean?¡°


    ?Yezz offered payment in intergalactic credits. That means her buyer is either alien or a planetary government. If anyone can keep this thing stored away so it does no harm, it¡¯s the governments. Or they can play diplomacy and haggle out a deal with the Xylars.¡°


    ?And Elias?¡°, Twitch wondered.


    ?He said he could match whatever Yezz offers, and hinted that he can distract the Xylars from Bloom - and from us.¡°


    Twitch raised his eyebrows. ?How is he going to do that from his shop? That smells, captain.¡°


    ?You have no idea how confused I was after that talk. I¡¯ve tried to come up with some reasonable guesses. I thought at first he¡¯s dealing with the Xylars, buying their toy back before someone they don¡¯t want to have it, or something. But I¡¯ve had time to think and his secrecy doesn¡¯t make sense if that were the case. So, truth be told, I got nothing.¡°


    ?I do.¡°, Grubs said calmly, a sly smile appearing on his lips while the other two looked at him expectantly.


    ?Elias¡°, Grubs began, ?is off the station fairly often. Enjoys trips down to the planet. Not my place to pry into people¡¯s hobbies, but it makes for a discreet meeting place. Especially for those who would raise eyebrows on the station itself. Someone who knew what the Xylars lost before we were back. Someone who always seems to know everything.¡°


    Twitch''s eyes widened, images of feathered creatures with two arms and four legs on his mind. ?The Felindar!¡°


    ?Exactly," Grubs said. ?They''re low-dimensional like us, interested in high-dim tech. They''d love this prototype. But unlike us, they can''t hide in swirly space regions. So, they became galactic traders.¡°


    ?They wouldn''t keep it a secret," Red said slowly. ?They''d use it to become the foremost traders in the galaxy, taking the heat off us. Just like Elias said.¡°


    The weight of this revelation hung heavy in the air for several moments. The crew did not realize that wishful thinking was their guide, and it was wrong. But wrong or not, it filled them with a newfound sense of purpose and they all rose at once.


    ?Twitch, plot a course to that damn wormhole. Grubs, run the numbers on FTL messaging from here and from the wormhole. Find out if we get a message through to Bloom or not. Let¡¯s go.¡°

 Need to Know

    ?So HQ did know all along!¡°, the face of Elias said impatiently from the holographic projection.


    ?I was just informed myself and immediately contacted you.¡°, the contact officer answered, sitting in a small and dimly lit, but very modern office clearly designed not for comfort but for work and efficiency.


    ?Right¡°, Elias said, with a sliver of sarcasm in his voice, ?So it¡¯s some kind of advanced hyperdrive prototype. And that¡¯s all the best intelligence service of humanity has figured out?¡°


    ?You are well aware how difficult it is for a Dangorod-born agent to infiltrate a low-G planet like Dephyr. And an undercover mission to any alien civilization is an impossibility. All we have are the news and rumors our traders pick up.¡°


    ?Ah yes.¡°, Elias continued, his voice unchanged, ?The Dangorod trade fleet. The intelligence service¡¯s navy. An agent every single one of them. I always wondered if there¡¯s a connection between that and the fact that the intelligence service is the best-funded of the seven branches of our government.¡°


    The contact officer was taken slightly aback. ?I couldn¡¯t ¡­¡°


    ?Need to know, of course.¡°, Elias interrupted speaking over the officer, the edge in his voice becoming slightly more obvious. He knew that the other man had finished his sentence before he had even received it, but Elias had found that keeping a normal conversation as much as possible helped him maintain his sanity.


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    The officer gave the projection an intense stare. ?Agent Thorne, have a few years among pirates affected your appreciation for the ways of your home world?¡°


    ?Not at all.¡°, Elias shot back immediately. ?I just believe that due to the infrequent contacts and the volatile situation, my need to know is more extensive than usual.¡°


    A short silence filled the room. No sounds from outside penetrated the walls, which were equipped with standard sound isolation to protect the secrets spoken inside.


    Finally, the officer spoke up again: ?I am sure that if you play a vital role in resolving the current situation to our satisfaction, you can put in a request for a field promotion that will be favorably evaluated.¡°


    ?Of course.¡°, Elias noted, straining to give his voice an entirely neutral tone.


    ?Until then, agent, we do want to get hold of that prototype. We have done some research and found a match. Yezzania Senglu, 43 standard years old, born and raised on Chroma IV. Still owns a small share in a trade company there, but can¡¯t use it due to a bit of a criminal record. I¡¯m sending you a file with the details. We can pull some strings and get that record cleaned up. That would allow her to visit her family, maybe reconnect with old friends that never left the planet. If required, you are authorized to to use that as a bargaining chip.¡°


    Elias Thorne confirmed the file transfer, then ended the conversation.


    His contact officer remained sitting in the office, lights dimmed. After a few moments of thought he took a tablet from the desk and entered into it: ?Mission note: Requesting psychological monitoring of agent Thorne regarding risk of compromised objectivity. Passive monitoring only. Do not withdraw him from mission without explicit authorization.¡°


    Then he took a deep breath and called up another connection. After just a few seconds, the display lit up green, showing only the insignia of the intelligence services instead of a face.


    ?Sir, you requested to get any updates on Binary Bloom directly and immediately. I just spoke to agent Thorne. I believe we have a problem.¡°

 Envoy

    ?Say that again.¡°, president Vance responded to her secretary, who had just stormed into the room. It was still morning,


    ?Twenty minutes ago, we received a message from a Felindar diplomatic ship requesting landing permissions for tomorrow afternoon. And a meeting with you, immediately following that.¡°, he repeated what he had said before, matter of factly.


    Amara Vance turned sideways, looking out over the city from her corner office, a constant reminder about the people she was representing. Erulas was the only true democracy inside the Junkstorm. It was also one of the few democratic planets where the political system had not devolved into technocratic bureaucracy. It was one of the reasons she loved her home, even though the constant negotiations, political alliances and public appearances exhausted her sometimes.


    ?Felindar¡°, she said, thinking aloud. Then she turned around, still pondering the implications.


    ?An official visit or cloak-and-dagger?¡°, she asked with a sliver of suspicion in her voice.


    ?Official by all appearances.¡°, the secretary confirmed, ?They made an unencrypted broadcast. Plenty of ground stations and ships had an opportunity to pick it up.¡°


    ?Good.¡°, Amara said, standing up from her chair, ?Contact the offices of Gordon, Krisi and Sibastyan. The ministers should be the official reception, with full entourage.¡°


    The secretary made quick notes on his hand-held tablet. Then he looked up and suggested: ?What about Alhan? The ministry of trade and cultural affairs would be fitting given the Felindar are most known as traders.¡°


    ?Good point.¡°, Amara nodded, ?Their visit might be unrelated and even if not we should keep up appearances. Change of plans. Gordon, Krisi and Alhan at the reception. Sibastyan at the ready, we keep the ministry of defense in the background for now.¡°


    The secretary left, taking more notes. As the doors closed behind him, Amara Vance started pacing along the window, like a caged panther. The avian aliens unexpected visit reeked of not being a coincidence. The Junkstorm was an uncomfortable place for higher-dimension species, which is why humans could thrive in it. Even four-dimensional aliens like the Qyrl and Felindar, who suffered not as badly as the high-dims, avoided the region unless they had a good reason. Diplomacy and trade was generally conducted a safe distance from the dimensional mess.


    If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    ?They didn¡¯t want to wait.¡°, she said to herself, stopping in her tracks. ?If they had sent a request, even an urgent one, it would take at least a week for a human delegation to reach the nearest such place.¡°, she trailed off, realizing she''d been muttering to herself.


    She went back to her desk and pulled open a drawer at its side, rummaging around until she found a small tablet hidden underneath some folders of paperwork. Tapping a button on the side of the desk darkened the windows as they turned into one-way mirrors.


    She put the tablet on the desk, standing it up against a pile of papers. It took a few minutes to set up the connection and until her conversation partner answered the call.


    ?Amara¡°, the Dangorod general greeted her with a gruff voice, ?An unofficial call. Is it that serious?¡°


    ?Montague¡°, Amara Vance, president of Erulas, returned the greeting, ?Going off record sometimes makes things easier.¡°, with a carefully placed and stressed ?sometimes¡° that left it ambiguous if it belonged to the first or second part of her sentence.


    ?It does.¡°, he answered, overlooking or ignoring her subtlety, ?What is the occasion?¡°


    ?I need to know how close your people are to the stolen hyper core. You can keep details to yourself as you see fit, but I have aliens not just knocking on the door but actually paying us a visit. Your spy masters probably know it if not already then any minute now.¡°


    A hint of an amused smile crossed the general¡¯s face: ?You overestimate how highly our intelligence has infiltrated your government, Amara. They¡¯re just fumbling about, same as all of us. They just feign secrecy where we admit ignorance.¡°


    ?Not because of that.¡°, Amara Vance retorted, ?The aliens sent out an open broadcast. If your people have even one spy monitoring general communications, he picked it up.¡°


    For a moment, much longer than he liked, the surprise was visible on Montague¡¯s face. Then he caught himself, and nodded. ?That¡¯s why the urgency.¡°, he verbally stumbled, collecting his thoughts as he was trying to match this new information with everything else he knew.


    ?They¡¯re touching down tomorrow afternoon. Come on, give me something to work with. I can¡¯t make an official request. You know that if I do that, I¡¯ll get a carefully vetted response with little content and dubious truthfulness.¡°


    General Montague nodded again. ?That¡¯s why we have this channel. Alright Amara, here¡¯s what I know, and I¡¯m sorry but it¡¯s not as much as you probably hope for. We have an agent on the other pirate outpost,¡° - ?of course you do¡°, Amara Vance muttered under her breath, ?and through him know who is fencing the hyper core. Not one-hundred percent, but all the details match and the timing is very much within our anticipated frame.¡°


    He made a short pause before continuing, and Amara let him do so. She knew when not to interrupt someone. ?The fence already has a buyer but we¡¯ve offered to beat it. We don¡¯t know who it is and she¡¯s not telling. We also don¡¯t know where the darn thing is.¡°


    Amara nodded. ?If you find out, you know I have marines on the station. Tell me, we¡¯ll grab it, and then figure out who gets it. You have my word on that.¡°


    Montague¡¯s eyes darted between hers before he spoke: ?Good to know. If we find out something more tangible, I¡¯ll let you know. Officially or otherwise.¡°

 Rogue Patrol

    ?Tell me again why we are letting Erulas run the show?¡°, Captain Zala asked her navigator, both of them sitting in the crew lounge with a snack and drinks. There was not much to do during breaks or off-time on a ship the size of the DSF Volcano. The capital ships had sports and entertainment facilities, but her ship was a patrol cruiser with a crew of 20.


    Corporal Khon sipped on his drink, studying his superior officer. Her shoulders were slightly pulled up, her eyes moving about nervously. She was tense as if they had received orders for a combat encounter, and not orders to monitor from a distance and stay out of anything that may happen.


    ?Case of who was there first, I guess. We¡¯re working with them for the moment.¡°


    Kohn pursed his lips. ?Like in the war.¡°, he said.


    ?I got a feeling there might be one.¡°, Zala said, looking past Khon into the distance. ?Superiors are all secretive, and rumors are that high officials in all three governments are involved.¡°


    Khon looked at his superior, still studying intently. Then he leaned forward: ?Speaking of rumors, Captain, the ones within the crew say we are not just here to babysit the Erulans. Fuel and armament are too intense for that. What is actually going on?¡°


    Zala hesitated, then leaned closer herself, her voice hushed: ?We are the only ones close enough to react, and keeping the Erulas battleship on the other side, away from us. Honestly, I don¡¯t have all the details either. But from what I¡¯ve heard, the pirates stole something really troublesome. Something that shouldn¡¯t fall into the wrong hands.¡°


    She looked around with a quick glance, but they were still alone in the crew lounge. So she continued: ?So naturally Erulas and Dangorod both want it for themselves.¡°


    Khon¡¯s eyes widened: ?Bad enough to start a war? Between humans?¡°


    Captain Zala shrugged, leaning back slightly. ?Don¡¯t think a full-out war. Maybe a skirmish or something.¡°


    They continued in silence for a moment, each lost in their own thoughts. Then, Zala pulled out a small control tablet, tapped on the screen for a few seconds and then spoke into it: ?Captain speaking. Meeting in the crew lounge in five. All hands.¡°


    This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    She leaned back and gave Khon a disarming smile. ?I hate rumors.¡°, she said, ?Let¡¯s clear them up.¡°


    Over the next few minutes, one by one the crew of the Volcano arrived in the crew lounge, the ship running on AI control for the moment. When everyone was there, captain Zala moved to one wall, where everyone could see and hear her, and spoke to the crew:


    ?This is something you better hear from me directly. The short of it is that we are all here, with that I mean us but also Erulas, for a thing the pirates stole from some aliens.¡°


    The crew listened intently as she continued: ?Problem is, nobody seems to know what exactly it is. Some tech, maybe a hyperdrive or something. Some higher-ups know more, but so far as I know, nobody would recognize it if they stood in front of it. So Erulas plan is to simply lean on the pirates until they cough it up.¡°


    A few slow nods among the crew signified they understood.


    ?Now the next part,¡°, Zala continued, ?is classified, doesn¡¯t leave this ship, understood?¡°, she waited until she felt everyone in the crew had either nodded or voiced agreement. ?Good. Officially, we are observers. But we have additional orders. Command thinks the pirates will make a run for it. The Erulans brash operation only tells them one thing: That their loot is hot, much hotter than their usual stuff. Why would they hand it over? If it¡¯s valuable enough for the marines and a battleship, it¡¯ll fetch them enough on the black market that they can immediately retire in luxury.¡°


    She looked around and silenced the murmur among the crew with a raised hand.


    ?Hold it. Here¡¯s the thing: They are wrong. Their loot is troublesome, not valuable. Our objective: Stop them from running.¡°


    Zala pressed on, her voice hardening: ?If they make a break for it, we pursue. And then, somewhere among the stars where nobody is watching, we¡¯ll make the pirates and their loot disappear.¡°


    ?Disappear¡°, a crew member at the front asked as she was finished, ?or ?disappear¡®?¡°


    Captain Zala looked over her crew. ?We are soldiers, not pirates. Our business is not stealing. We¡¯re here to blow them up.¡°


    ?Why us?¡°, another crew member asked. ?We¡¯re not an interceptor and there are better armed ships in the fleet.¡°


    ?That is true.¡°, Zala answered, ?But we¡¯re hunting a pirate ship. How many of you know how exactly they get alien tech? Nobody? Alright, here¡¯s how: A couple decades ago, some genius outlaw modified the dimensional shears. The device most of our ships have that can pierce a warp bubble and force a ship into normal space. Pirates use a modified version that doesn¡¯t force the whole ship into normal space. There¡¯s no boarding operation. They rip out the hyperdrive and get just that to fall out of hyperspace. The rest of the ship keeps going. We expect that once they notice we¡¯re following, they¡¯ll swing around and do that to us. Because most human ships only have one hyperdrive. If they rip it out, battleship or not, you¡¯re dead in the void and they can get away. The Volcano is one of the few ships in the fleet with two hyperdrives.¡°

 Pressure

    The reek of machine oil mixed with too-often recycled oxygen hung heavy in the air as Nicodemus made his way through the cramped corridor at the far end of Binary Bloom. The occasional gurgling of water or other liquids in pipes running along the ceiling was like the beating heart of the pirate outpost to his ears. His steps echoed along the metal walls and ceiling, and along the tracks set into the floor used by heavy carrier drones. Nobody had made the effort to make this section anything but functional.


    He knew the station like the palm of his hand, being its semi-official head. Moving around confidently, he finally reached his destination: A nondescript storage depot, its heavy metal door ajar. The light shining into the corridor was much more bright than the sparse lighting on the metal walls that Nicodemus was passing.


    He turned into the storage and found it about two-thirds empty, with a number of unmarked boxes filling up the back part and a small table and four chairs along one wall. Yezz was sitting in one of the chairs, tapping on her tablet computer, a mug in front of her on the table. She looked up as Nicodemus entered and gave him a nod.


    He closed the heavy door behind him, making sure that its air-tight seals closed fully.


    ?Yezzania.¡°, he simply said as a greeting, using her full name.


    ?Nico¡°, she answered, gesturing towards the chairs opposite her. Nobody on Binary Bloom called their governor using his full name. Well, not until recently when the Erulas marines showed up and made a point of being official and formal.


    Yezz leaned back in her chair. ?I know what you want and why. My office isn¡¯t remote enough for this. But no, I never reveal my buyers. That is one of the reasons they trust me. Besides, most of the time I don¡¯t even know myself who the final buyer is, because I work with a network of people like me, buying and selling. A given item, especially alien tech, might go through half a dozen hands before it reaches whoever is ultimately purchasing it.¡°


    Nicodemus sighed, moving over and putting himself into an empty chair. ?Could at least let me sit down before you break the bad news.¡°


    ?It is you,¡°, she replied with a sly smile dancing over her lips, ?who is asking inappropriate questions.¡°


    ?I didn¡¯t even¡­ I mean, you gave the answer before I had even asked. But yes, I want to know what we are dealing with and with whom we are dealing. Yezzania, I have marines breathing down my neck and government heads on the line demanding answers. We¡¯ve all kept this station out of trouble with the authorities by being useful to them. Plausible deniability and all that. What I mean to say is: We exist because this way they can cry about us being evil criminals and there¡¯s nothing they can do when the aliens your crews plunder complain about it.¡°


    Yezz sat up straight, and the smile had disappeared from her face. In her best business woman tone of voice she answered: ?I am acutely aware of that. We both know that most of the alien tech I trade in eventually ends up in the hands of someone official. Someone who can¡¯t be found dead in the vicinity of pirates, but has a desire to obtain some tech that the aliens aren¡¯t selling to humans. Or not in large enough quantities.¡°


    She took a deep breath and relaxed a little. ?Nico, I don¡¯t know myself. The crew came back from what we all thought was an ordinary job. Instead of me finding a buyer, one of my regulars contacted me and asked about it, offering a solid deal. It¡¯s not much of a secret when crews leave on a job and timings are fairly regular, so it wouldn¡¯t take much guesswork to know another hyper core is likely to appear on the market.¡°


    This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.


    Nicodemus nodded, waited for her to continue but she didn¡¯t. After a few seconds of silence, he spoke up: ?What told you that there¡¯s more to it?¡°


    She picked up her mug and took a sip before answering his question. ?That the order was not for a hyper core, you know, any hyper core, but specifically for this one. Not that¡­ I mean it doesn¡¯t have a name, but he was specific about the timing and region of space where it was acquired. About ten days after the heist. At that time the crew was still in outer space. How could he know?¡°


    ?Not the only oddity happening with this particular loot.¡°, Nicodemus completed the thought. ?You also mentioned Elias Thorne making an offer. He might be doing a deal here and there under the radar, but there¡¯s no way he has such connections.¡°


    He trailed off, and nobody filled the silence that ensued. ?Something is off with him.¡°, Nicodemus finally continued, stating the obvious plainly. ?My intuition tells me he isn¡¯t telling us the whole story. And I don¡¯t mean the usual omissions and secrets everyone on Bloom has.¡°


    ?Agreed¡°, Yezz said, ?After I heard the story from Red, I had my office searched for bugs by a trustworthy guy who is really good in surveillance tech. He found nothing. Elias didn¡¯t know because he eavesdropped on me.¡°


    Nicodemus pinched the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes in thought. ?Look, this is not the usual business. Bend some of your rules for me, Yezz. We need to get to the bottom of this before the marines cause even more trouble, or the other planets decide to send in their own guys just because.  I have four supply haulers en route with food and goods we need. If they turn them back, things will become more than just inconvenient.¡°


    Yezzania examined Nicodemus carefully. Her eyes wandered over his face, shoulders, arms, hands. After long seconds stretching out she exhaled and looked him straight in the eyes. ?You¡¯re right. This is a danger to all of us. But I¡¯m sorry that I can¡¯t help as much as you probably think. There were too many coincidences, so I sent Red and her crew somewhere they can get a lab report on the thing. They should be on their way back by now. A couple of days and we¡¯ll know more.¡°


    ?We don¡¯t have a couple of days!¡°, Nicodemus exclaimed, stressing every word. ?Marines are here on the station today. People want answers now. People who I don¡¯t want to piss off. People who can send more marines, or battleships, or whatever they think it takes.¡°


    He stood up, quickly enough that the chair almost toppled over. ?Yezz, I need something, anything. I¡¯ve been playing for time and diddling around as much as I can but that¡¯s limited.¡°


    The governor of Binary Bloom began pacing up and down near the table, his fingers drumming his hips. ?They think we are hiding it, or trying to play them against each other. Or whatever they think. Fact is, part of me is happy that the marines don¡¯t let anyone exit or leave, because otherwise there¡¯d be a good chance I could be sitting in one of those unused, soundproof storages next door, tied to a chair, with one of those Dangorod spies interrogating me. With a blunt object in one hand and a scalpel in the other.¡°


    ?Oh please.¡°, Yezz tilted her head, ?Don¡¯t be so dramatic. I¡¯ve heard they have quite effective drugs these days. Plus, of course, direct stimulation of the pain center.¡°


    ?Very reassuring, thank you.¡°


    ?Anyway. I got it. Not a fan of holding a hot potato myself. I¡¯ll get you something. I¡¯m just worried about the interception risk.¡°


    ?How many aliens do you think¡°, Nicodemus said very slowly, ?don¡¯t already know way more about this core than any human lab can figure out? The only secret in all of this is where the damn thing is.¡°


    ?You think our friendly next-door governments know what they are looking for?¡°


    Nicodemus turned around, looking straight at Yezz. ?That¡¯s a good question. By the pressure output I experience I figured yes they do. But thinking of it, they never mentioned any specifics. They might be in the same place as us - knowing that it¡¯s not an ordinary core, but not knowing why and what.¡°


    ?If you¡¯re right with that,¡°, Yezz began.


    ?Then any information we can get about it gives us an advantage.¡°, Nicodemus continued.


    ?And a possible bargaining chip!¡°, Yezz completed the sentence, excited.

 Flechette

    Micah was hunched over inside the narrow ventilation shaft, his toolbox to one side, a work lamp on a small tripod on the other, the control panel open before him. His toolbox was standing next to him on the metal floor, the panel being in a horizontal portion of the shaft.


    ?There you are, little bugger.¡°, he said to himself, pulling out the burnt-out relay. It was unusually quiet in the shaft today, with but a few distant noises from the inside of the station traveling through its length.


    Two days since the marines arrived. No violence, no arrests, they simply took control of the docking bay and the control center. The rumors spoke about interrogations, of the stern but friendly sort. Micah wiped away a few beads of sweat from his forehead. Without the fans running, the ventilation shafts always became uncomfortably hot within minutes.


    After a day, life returned to semblance of normal on Binary Bloom. Everything was subdued, as if waiting for a storm to pass, but the market and shops opened again and most people went about their business. For Micah, that was fixing things around the station. Keeping Binary Bloom running was always a challenge, with its different parts and pieces, and the alien superstructure that the station was built into showing through here and there.


    He switched out the relay for a new one and put it into its place, then screwed the control panel shut again. He was muscular, but short, the result of growing up on a planet with higher gravity than Earth. That was why it was usually him who went into the shafts and other cramped spaces.


    A metallic clanking from further down the shaft made him turn around just as he was about to climb up the rungs, having packed up his equipment and strapped it to his belt. He stopped and took his foot of the first rung, listening for more sounds. There was a shuffling kind of noise, barely perceptible. Without the clang before he¡¯d not have noticed it.


    He slowly moved across the parallel section towards the other vertical part of the shaft, this one leading down. His rubber shoes made no sound. It was an intentional feature, most sounds being amplified inside the small shafts and maintenance tunnels of the station. Peering down the shaft he spotted a flickering, quickly moving light down two levels, where the shaft ended in the ceiling of a wider main air duct. A second later, the light disappeared.


    Micah knew that there were no other planned works in this section - otherwise they would have been merged with his small repair. He started climbing down, methodically, in the quick but distinctly unhurried way of someone intimately familiar with every movement. He reached the main duct in ten seconds, emerging in its ceiling, the smaller shaft offset to the side so that the rungs could continue on the wall of the main duct.


    Stepping off the ladder, the mechanic looked to both sides, his head-mounted lamp casting a cone of light into the darkness. Nothing. And yet, this must have been the source of those sounds. Micah went a few steps into the air duct, checking floor, ceiling and walls carefully. There! A panel to one side was undone. It was hanging on the four studs at its corners, but there were no nuts on them. More than odd. An apprentice in a hurry might forget one nut, but not all four.


    Micah approached the panel carefully and listened. On the other side, behind the sound-dampening foam he knew to be inside those panels, he heard voices. His forehead creased in confusion. His eyes narrowed, darting along the edges of the panel and fixating for a split second on each of the studs that was missing a nut. None of the panels in this part of the system should lead to any rooms. If they did, he would have taken them to access the work he had just concluded, not crawled through a narrow shaft for five minutes.


    This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    ?Oh well¡°, he thought to himself, ?let¡¯s figure this out.¡°


    He lifted the panel from the studs and moved it aside. The opening it revealed was just large enough for a man to squeeze through while bent over. Behind it, he found a small, dimly lit room filled with crates, boxes and several items of clearly alien origin lying around openly. Two female figures standing on the other end of the room, five or six steps away from Micah, whirled around at the sound of the panel being pushed aside. They were standing in shadows cast by the boxes around them and Micah could barely make out their silhouettes, but no details.


    ?Shit!¡°, one of them exclaimed, ducking deeper into cover behind a few boxes. The other woman, slightly smaller, took a step towards the opening Micah was looking through, her right arm falling to her side, then raising again. Micah spotted the outline of a gun in her hand and jumped to the side at the same moment a loud whooping sound echoed through the room and into the air duct where it reverberated through the metal tube, coming back four, five, six times in the following second. The typical sound of a magnetic railgun firing.


    Micah yelled out as pain shot up from his leg. A quick glance showed him that the pants had been shredded. Flechette. Of course. Micah grabbed the panel he had just moved aside and slammed it on the studs. As the hole closed, he could see the trigger-happy woman walking towards him, the gun raised, and just as the panel slid unto the studs, it rattled under the impact of another set of needles hitting it. But it held. Flechette was the common ammunition on spacecrafts and stations. The risk of puncturing the hull was too large with bullets. It also meant a somewhat solid panel could stop them. Small dents indicated the impact points.


    Micah grabbed the screwer from his tool belt and rammed it on the top-right bolt, then the top-left one. It whirled twice, screwing on a standard nut from its compartment. He was thankful that most of his tools were zero-gravity versions because he occasionally worked on the outside hull. Loose bolts would be a liability in zero-g, so the tool stored and fed them from an internal storage.


    Right now, all of those were flashes of background thoughts in Micah¡¯s head. Blood was running from his leg in a thin line. Painful, but not serious. A few needles were still poking out from his flesh, but most of the flechettes had missed him or just shredded his pant. He grimaced and stood up, grabbing the lamp he had dropped, then moved quickly through the vent, limping slightly. The nearest exit was some distance along, but he didn¡¯t want to try climbing a ladder with that leg.


    A loud banging from behind washed over him, followed by several similar sounds. A grin shot across his face before it was replaced again by determination and pain. It would take them a bit to open that panel from the other side. But in the end, it was just a panel. Micah kept moving. The banging stopped. The woman had understood that the panel had been fixed.


    Two corners and almost a minute later, Micah had finally reached the exit. As he had hoped, it was open. They had come this way. He climbed through into the small maintenance room behind. He stopped for a moment to rip some of the cloth from his pant and bind it across the wound, suppressing a yelp as he dragged it across the needles still stuck in his flesh, pressing them in even deeper. But he had no time to pull them out. Behind the door the bustle of Binary Bloom waited. He could merge into the crowd and disappear - as long as he left no trail of blood that would be easy to follow. A crash echoed out from the air duct, signaling that it was time to go. Micah opened the door and stepped into the corridor, quickly vanishing among the people moving about.

 Game Changer

    Yezz¡¯s office desk was illuminated by a single lamp and the video display in front of her. In the shadow underneath her desk, her foot was tapping nervously.


    ?Wrap it in two layers of quantum-safe encryption.¡°, she was just saying to the video feed showing Red Rodriguez inside her cockpit.


    ?And the blockade is total?¡°, the pirate captain asked Yezz in response, ?No chance for you to sneak past?¡°


    Yezz slowly shook her head. ?If there were, half of Binary Bloom would have used it by now. Sure, the marines haven¡¯t arrested anyone yet, but lots of people here have plenty of incentives to not test their luck.¡°


    ?You¡¯re probably right, Yezzania.¡°, Red agreed across the video feed. ?Take care. Want to get a drink with you when this is all over. I¡¯ll get you the data, slow encryption. It¡¯ll be a few minutes.¡°


    Yezz nodded, ?Thanks, Red. See you soon.¡°


    She closed the video feed, which made the room even dimmer. She leaned back in her chair, exhaling, then shaking her shoulders. She hadn¡¯t even noticed how tense she was. She gazed into the distance, in the darkness of her working room. The fake window that usually showed a bright blue lake surrounded by lush forest was turned off. Beyond the bright cone bathing the desk in light, there was a black void. The emptiness calmed her.


    Two minutes later, a small blue light began pulsing, indicating incoming data. She stood up, pacing the room and glancing at the light every few steps. It was risky to send data across this distance, both as a video call and as files. The room was silent except for the distance hum of the station¡¯s life support system.


    This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.


    It took four long minutes for the data transfer to complete and the blue light switching to green. Yezz jumped at the sight and rushed back to her desk. ?Decrypt¡°, she told the computer while sitting down, and the display of her tabled flickered to life. The progress bar moved slowly as she picked up the tablet. Files began to appear on the screen, the contents of the encrypted data. A few seconds stretched to subjectively much longer. Finally, the main file appeared, the report she had been waiting for. She tapped it, then flipped through the text, quickly digesting the summary at the front and moving on towards the detailed analysis result near the end. She stopped turning pages and started reading.


    ?A 7D anchor component.¡°, she summed up, speaking her thoughts aloud. ?Resilience against dimensional disturbances. Faster travel by cutting through it.¡°


    She furrowed her brow, wondering. ?Useful, sure. But why is absolutely everyone jumping up and down over that?¡°


    A small indicator at the bottom of the screen caught her attention. It had been there the entire time, but she had been too focused on the report. It was the symbol indicating embedded hidden data - steganographic content. She hadn¡¯t seen that one in quite a while. Steganography had largely fallen out of fashion. She tapped the symbol and the reader extracted the hidden date, and found it had been encrypted to her personal key. That was even more odd. She decrypted the text.


    ?Hey Yezzania¡°, it started. She glanced at the bottom. The name signed there was Quennell Scotcher. ?Quenn¡°, she exclaimed, ?What are you up to?¡°. She started reading.


    It was only two pages. After she had read it, she read it again. Then she put the tablet down with trembling fingers. It dropped on the desk with a soft clang.


    ?That¡¯s the end of the human race.¡° Cold dread filled her. The tablet on the desk detailed how the hyper core prototype could lock a ship into hyperspace.


    ?No more dimensional shears.¡°, Yezz stated, her voice cracking. ?No more forcing ships into normal space. They simply hadn¡¯t switched it on. Prototype testing. One feature at a time.¡°


    Even in the dim light, Yezz had become visibly pale.

 Lions Den

    Distant stars were glittering outside the cockpit of the Grimalkin, a tapestry of tiny dots in an otherwise perfect void. The three inside were united in stunned silence.


    ?Well¡°, Grubs said after a long while.


    ?That¡°, Twitch added, trailing off.


    ?Guess¡°, Red spoke slowly, with a pause before continuing: ?Looks like. I mean. Guess we won¡¯t be going home now. I mean not soon.¡°


    Twitch¡¯s shoulder slumped even lower. ?Yeah¡°, he said, ?Valarie won¡¯t like that.¡°


    Grubs shot him a look. Then understood. ?She¡¯s not the only one.¡°, he added.


    They looked to the stars for a while, lost in thought. The barely audible background sounds of the ship filled the space their silence had opened. The slow flicker of information passing over the displays in the cockpit provided the only visual change for a long while.


    Finally, Red slapped the sides of her chair and pushed herself out of it: ?Too bad we couldn¡¯t make contact on the other side of the wormhole. That¡¯d left us with more options.¡°


    Twitch looked at her sideways, while Grubs nodded. ?Not enough stuff left as payment for another transit.¡°, the crew¡¯s mechanic explained to the younger man.


    Red pointed a finger at him in a gesture of agreement. ?That¡°, she said, ?So the only human space we have within range is the Junkstorm. Grimalkin wasn¡¯t built for long-distance travel.¡°


    ?Plus¡°, Twitch continued, now back on track, ?Our supplies left are for 12 days, 15 maybe. Water and air recycling will keep up longer, but food and power will be an issue.¡°


    ?So it¡¯s gotta be the Junkstorm, but it can¡¯t be Bloom. And we must assume Black Sails has the same situation.¡°, Captain Red summed up, now a twinkling in her eyes: ?I have an idea.¡°


    Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    She paced over to the navigation console where a local star map was being holographically projected into the space above it. It was more crisp and clear than the one they all were used to on the Rusty Bolt. With a few gestures she panned and zoomed into a specific, labeled region.


    ?We go to ground where they¡¯d never suspect us. We aren¡¯t in the Rusty Bolt. The Grimalkin is properly registered and all.¡°, she pointed to the yellow star in the middle of the holographic map, he finger tracing a faint line through the display. ?We land on Erulas, resupply there, put in some maintenance work that we can drag out if needed, and wait how the situation evolves.¡°


    Grubs looked at her with wide eyes as Red put a sly smile on her lips. ?That is one daring move.¡°, he acknowledged. His voice remained firm, sure.


    ?Why not Dephyr or Dangorod?¡°, Twitch wanted to know. He was still sitting in the pilot¡¯s chair, the creme-white upholstery standing out in contrast to the dark console in front of him.


    Red thought for a while. Then she answered: ?We aren¡¯t sure if they are involved in all this or not. The planets are competitors, like different countries on the more densely populated planets. And also, I have some friends on Erulas. Not best friends, but enough of a reason to visit and close enough that they might help us out with a few basics.¡°


    She swiveled the navigator chair around and sat down, facing the other two.


    ?When will Yezz answer us about the Felindar connection?¡°, Grubs changed the subject. He had a habit of doing that as a sign that he agreed with something and had nothing else to say about it.


    ?I hope she picked up on the hint.¡°, Red sighed, ?I obviously couldn¡¯t state it plainly.¡°


    Grubs continued: ?Right. But why was she so adamant getting the lab report immediately? Sure, the marines on Bloom are an issue. But what does the lab report solve?¡°


    They had all been there during the call, so Grubs knew that Red had no more information than he had. But she dealt with their fence more often than any of them, so maybe she had some insights that he had not. But she had to disappoint him. ?No clue.¡°, she said, ?She¡¯s well connected within Bloom as well, so maybe someone else can use it. But I don¡¯t know.¡°


    Again, silence filled the cockpit. This time, Twitch ended it, turning around on his seat towards the pilot station. ?Alright¡°, he said, ?Let¡¯s plot a course to Erulas. Any favorite port?¡°


    Red¡¯s smile widened. ?Why not go the whole way in? Let¡¯s visit the capital.¡°

 Smugglers

    Quantum Curry was half-full, just the way Nicodemus liked it. He had gone to lunch early as usual, to avoid the crowd. Binary Bloom had an artificial 25 hour day-night cycle, like most ships and stations.


    The multi-cultural restaurant was located conveniently close to his offices, but it was also a great place to eat and very popular for its quality and delectable food.


    ?Hey Nico.¡°, a deep male voice interrupted him mid-meal. He recognized Baer Gandan without turning around. The tech chief of Binary Bloom set down opposite Nicodemus. He waved away the menu projection that immediately appeared on the table in front of him.


    ?A word.¡°, he continued, ?Urgently.¡°


    Nicodemus stuffed another bite into his mouth, but nodded and looked at Baer, inviting him to speak.


    ?One of my mechanics was shot during routine maintenance. He¡¯s mostly ok. But I want that looked into, immediately. He says he stumbled upon a hidden cache of alien tech.¡°


    Nicodemus swallowed his food, blinking a few times in surprise. Once his mouth was free, he said: ?That makes no sense. Stolen alien tech is our primary export. Why would anyone hide it and shoot someone over it. You sure your man didn¡¯t try to make some side money?¡°


    ?Negative on that. Micah is as honest as anyone on here can be. And it would be stupid to come to me even before hobbling over to the doc.¡°


    Nicodemus, already chewing again, nodded, and put another bite in his mouth while standing up. It was not his first meal cut short, but he hated it every time. With a gesture, he asked Baer to lead the way, and the two men walked out of Quantum Curry with rapid steps.


    While walking and chewing, the governor of Binary Bloom tapped on the small tablet he was carrying with him. When the two reached the maintenance room a few minutes later, two armed guards were waiting for them, and a third arrived shortly after. The pirate outpost had a small armed force that was rarely used, but always ready. There was very little crime on board Bloom, if you didn¡¯t count the piracy part.


    With an enthusiastic ?Let¡¯s go!¡°, Nicodemus sent two of the men into the air duct after Baer had given them quick information on the layout inside and where to head to. The chief technician and the governor followed, with the third guard taking up the rear.


    Headlamps illuminated the metal inside the air duct as the men went along, weapons raised and ready. Their footsteps echoed ahead of them, rubber soles on metal plates. Loud enough that someone listening would hear them coming. So while moving quickly, they also listened for the sound of someone scrambling away. But only their own echoes could be heard, and the faint rumbling of the outpost¡¯s life support systems over the even fainter distant sounds of people.


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    They reached the panel in less than a minute. Despite having been put back on the struts, it was clearly the one Baer¡¯s mechanic had been speaking about. Small dents indicated the impact points of the Flechette needles, and two corners were ripped out by force.


    They slowly opened the panel from the sides, ready for a barrage of needles shooting out, but nothing of the kind happened. One of the guards, who had found time to grab a helmet, carefully took a look inside. After a few seconds, he signaled all clear.


    The room behind was a small storage room, just like Micah the mechanic had said. There were crates and boxes stacked on top of each other, some of them apparently of alien origin. If Micah had been there, he could have told them that a few crates were missing.


    Three of them fit into the room without getting into each other¡¯s way, and two guards secured the entrance. They conducted a quick search without touching anything, but found nobody and nothing else but the boxes. The room smelled of stale air and old metal.


    Baer and Nicodemus took in the scenery. Some of the boxes were orderly stacked, some in disarray scattered around the small room. Nicodemus summed up the scene: ?They brought out a few crates in a hurry.¡°


    Baer nodded.


    ?They might come back for the rest. I¡¯ll leave the guards here just in case. But Baer,¡° he continued, pointing to two large boxes, open and empty, ?look at this. These ones don¡¯t fit through the entrance. Is there another way into this place?¡°


    ?Don¡¯t think so.¡°, Baer answered, but nevertheless the two took another look around the room, finding nothing.


    ?You¡¯re the tech guy.¡°, Nicodemus turned to Baer, ?Tell me how these boxes came into this room. Their contents were moved out, but the boxes themselves shouldn¡¯t be here.¡°


    ?You¡¯re right.¡°, Baer agreed, his eyes darting between the boxes and the exit several times.


    The blood drained from Nicodemus¡¯ face, his calm expression faltering. Baer also suddenly fell stiff and tense. ?Unless¡°, he slowly said, ?they are brought in through a higher dimension. Takes only a 4D crane to lift them over a wall. Remember the flat world example we learn in school? To beings that live on the surface of a globe, we are invisible and we can easily move things from their world, through the higher dimension - the 3rd - to other places in their world, even across walls or other 2D barriers, simply by lifting it up a bit.¡°


    ?But why?¡°, Nicodemus asked, ?You can bring whatever you want into Bloom. We don¡¯t check cargo manifests, neither incoming nor outgoing.¡°


    ?Exactly.¡°, Baer replied. ?It¡¯s brilliant. If you are an alien and you want to plant tech with the humans, of course. The pirate outposts are where a random piece of alien tech raises no eyebrows at all, and like you said, nobody would notice if they appear from nowhere.¡°


    ?All you need is someone on the inside.¡°, Nicodemus completed the thought, ?And that¡¯s not difficult among a bunch of pirates. Offer them a nice enough deal and they won¡¯t even ask questions.¡°


    ?That doesn¡¯t answer the question. Why?¡°


    ?And who.¡°, Nicodemus added. ?Those two questions are most likely connected.¡°


    Baer nodded. His eyes were searching the room.


    ?I¡¯ll let guards stay here and you and me¡°, Nicodemus said after a short moment, ?go and find some of the fences and tech guys who understand alien tech well. There¡¯s plenty of stuff they left behind, it should give us some clues.¡°


    Solemnly, the two men left the storage room, climbing back through the opening towards the air duct.

 Hammer

    When Nicodemus turned up at Yezz¡¯s office, or what she used as one, he found her staring into the distance, barely acknowledging his presence. He knocked again, on the door frame, and she seemed to snap out of it, mostly. Her voice was still hollow as she said ?Oh hey Nico. I was¡­ errm¡­ just about to come see you.¡°


    He looked at her, squinting his eyes. He slowed down, walked over to the chair opposite hers on the table that was both her desk and negotiation table. He said down and asked: ?What¡¯s wrong?¡°


    He had noticed the tablet on the table, but was respectful enough to not steal glances at it.


    ?I¡¯m afraid¡°, she said slowly, gathering her thoughts, ?the marines are not our worst issue. By far not.¡°


    Nicodemus leaned in a bit, puzzled expression on his face. ?Can you be any more cryptic, Yezzania?¡°


    She shot him a quick glance of the ?if looks could kill¡° variety, then sighed. She found his sarcasm misplaced, but didn¡¯t say so, more important things on her mind: ?Nico, I just got some insights into just what Red and her crew lifted off that Xylar freighter. This will put all of us out of business. Here¡°, she pushed the tablet with the still open report over to Nicodemus.


    The governor of Binary Bloom studied the report, his eyes getting bigger as he did. When he was done, Yezz was treated to a rare sight - Nicodemus with his mouth open, lost for words.


    ?This¡°, he said after catching himself, ?is bad.¡°


    Yezz nodded.


    They sat silently together for a while, contemplating the implications of it all.


    ?Yezz¡°, Nicodemus started, forgetting for the moment that she was only called by her short-form name when she wasn¡¯t in the room, ?This has multiple consequences.¡°


    She looked up, letting the faux pas slip if she had even noticed it, and raised her eyebrows slightly.


    Nicodemus continued: ?First, it shows that the Xylars are more bothered by our piracy than we had assumed. It makes sense, of course. Sure, they manufacture hyperdrives with ease, but they still aren¡¯t free and it takes resources, time and money to replace them. We thought their lack of reaction for so many years meant it¡¯s a minor nuisance at most. But it wasn¡¯t, they just decided to not answer with military, but innovation. Instead of playing whack-a-mole with us, they spent their time figuring out how to eliminate the problem altogether.¡°


    Yezz nodded solemnly. ?Logical conclusion¡°, she simply stated the obvious.


    ?It also means,¡°, Nicodemus continued, ?selling to unknowns, which are possibly aliens, risks spreading this tech far and wide. If only the Xylars have it, they might keep it to themselves as a unique advantage over other races, or sell it with a hefty surcharge. I don¡¯t think they¡¯re likely to sell it cheap just to spite us.¡°


    ?Hold on!¡°, Yezz interrupted, her face and gestures becoming more alive again, ?That would mean that we can forget about Xylar freighters, but at least for the foreseeable future we could still hit others.¡°


    Nicodemus nodded.


    ?In that case, all things considered¡°, Yezz said, ?the best thing for us to do is not to take the most lucrative deal, but the one that keeps this tech out of as many alien hands as possible. Which means selling to one of the human planets. Who knows, maybe they can even figure out a countermeasure.¡°


    ?So we just call the crew of the Rusty Bolt back and hand over the core to the marines? Sounds too easy.¡°, Nico pondered.


    ?Could get us into trouble with the other planets, though I don¡¯t see what they¡¯d gain from going after us after it¡¯s done.¡°, Yezz wondered.


    Nicodemus shook his head: ?A few ruffled feathers, but in the end they all need the products we are selling. It won¡¯t be a big deal. Maybe it really is that easy.¡°


    ?Except for the pissed-off aliens, of course.¡°, Yezz added. ?Might the Xylars come after us for revenge? They¡¯re not known for that, and they probably have not just one prototype. And even if, they¡¯ll still have the design documents and can build a new one.¡°


    Nicodemus furrowed his brow for a moment, started to speak, then stopped again, then said: ?It might be the step too much. We¡¯ve been a nuisance for three decades. They never did anything, but in their minds all the trouble we¡¯ve caused, minor as it may, could accumulate. And now it¡¯s too much.¡°


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    ?But if so, they¡¯d have struck by now.¡°


    ?No¡°, Nicodemus disagreed, ?The Junkstorm is worse for higher-dimensional beings. The more dimensions the worse it gets. Fourers find it troublesome, Fivers already a big problem. Any race home in six or more dimensions avoids it like the plague.¡°


    ?For getting in and settling or conquering.¡°, Yezz pointed out, ?They should be capable of a remote strike of some kind. Just wiping us out the way we hit a fly.¡°


    The office around them was quiet. Even the constant background noise of the station felt more distant and quiet. In fact, it was quiet. Nicodemus perked up. In more than a decade on the station, he had never not heard its low rumbling. For a split second, his own breathing and heartbeat were the only sounds he could make out even though he strained his ears.


    Then, the lights went out. Not just the room lighting. All the lights. Not a single indicator light of a device remained. Yezz¡¯s office was a backroom and had no windows, which were a rare luxury on the station in any case. So from one moment to the next, it was plunged into perfect darkness that not even the eyes of an owl could see anything in, much less a hundred times less light-sensitive eyes of a human.


    Two seconds later, a new noise appeared in the darkness. Faint. Humans shouting, muffled by walls and bulkheads. An occasional sound of panic, but even though Yezz and Nicodemus could not  make out the words, it was clear that most of the voices were alarmed but controlled. The shouts were people coordinating in the darkness. Underneath it was the barely perceptible murmur of other people doing the same at normal talking volume.


    The two did the same. ?What the ¡­? Erm. Nico?¡°, Yezz said, and Nicodemus answered: ?Not a power outage. Your tablet and my watch have internal batteries.¡°


    ?Right.¡°, Yezz answered, then continued: ?If we move around, we should keep talking for position info.¡°


    Nicodemus agreed. ?Can the door be opened mechanically?¡°, he said, but he sounded absent-minded.


    Yezz nodded out of habit, then added verbal confirmation. ?Yes, lever at the right. Keep sitting, I know the room and won¡¯t bump into stuff.¡°


    A shuffling sound indicated that Yezz had stood up and was moving towards the door, keeping her feet placed on the floor at all times, shifting them forwards instead of lifting them up. As she had suggested, she kept talking. For lack of better content, she simply repeated ?moving, moving, moving¡° over and over again. Her voice sounded steady but there was a small tremble in it showing that she was calm, but under pressure.


    ?EMP¡°, Nicodemus suddenly exclaimed, ?They hit us with an EMP burst. Smaller devices aren¡¯t usually shielded, so they¡¯ll be fried. The main station electronics are shorted out, but once the crew gets there they should be able to restart them. Though without electrical tools that¡¯ll take a while.¡°


    His voice had the sound of someone rambling, putting out a stream of consciousness. He was speaking the thoughts as they occurred to him, without refining them. He went on: ?Life support is offline. There¡¯s enough air for a couple hours before it gets stale, a day or so before CO2 levels become toxic.¡°


    Yezz continued her shuffling steps, now slower and more careful. A barely audible bumping sound indicated that one of her feet had found the wall or the door. ?I¡¯m here.¡°, she said, mostly to say anything other than ?moving¡°. She switched to repeating ?looking for the lever¡° while the tapping sounds of her fingers probing the wall and door faintly echoed through the room.


    Outside, most of the voices had calmed down to normal volume, which was all but too low to hear inside the room. What little panic had been there for a minute had subsided. The outlaws were not unfamiliar with surprises and having to improvise.


    ?No Nico, you dumbhead.¡°, the governor said to himself, ?It won¡¯t be that long. People need light to function. There are plenty of chemical torches on the station, and there will be good old fires soon. That¡¯ll use up the oxygen much faster. I should really be¡­¡°, he said, trailing of, ?¡­but what for? The control center is useless now. No, no. The market. People will go to the market. I should get there.¡°, then slightly louder he said ?Yezzania, door?¡°


    The sound of metal grinding came as a response. ?Just found the lever. It¡¯ll be open in a sec.¡°


    A scraping sound indicated that Nicodemus was standing up out of his chair, then a loud thumb drowned out all other noises for a split second. The chair had fallen over. Another shuffling sound, this one with soft squeaking noises, someone carefully walking forward on rubber soles that couldn¡¯t easily slide over the floor. ?Coming¡°, Nicodemus repeated with each step, copying Yezz. She answered ?here¡°, also repeatedly, to guide him towards the door.


    Another metal scratching sound indicated that the door was opening while Nicodemus was walking forward. The outside corridor was pitch-black just like the room. The noises from outside were a sliver more loud now, with one less obstacle between them and the two.


    With a soft ?thud¡°, Nicodemus bumped into Yezz. ?Easy¡°, she said, ?Wait. I¡¯ll grab your hand. So we don¡¯t have to holler all the time.¡°


    They stepped outside into the corridor, Yezz shifting her feet over the floor, Nicodemus lifting them up slightly because his rubber soles didn¡¯t allow for easy sliding.


    ?Yezzania¡°, he said, ?We need to get to the market. What¡¯s the shortest way from here that we can reliably find in the dark?¡°


    The shuffling stopped for a second, half a step later the squeaking, as Yezz stopped and then Nicodemus. She thought. For a moment, the darkness engulfed them aided by silence. In this moment, they could have stood in the middle of giant hall, or inside a tiny room, it would have been impossible to make out the difference.


    Then she simply said: ?Follow me.¡°, and their careful footsteps started anew.

 Lights Out

    Valarie Sarron savored the flavor from her bio-sculpted mushroom stir-fry. The side of fried cultivated chicken was small enough for her to consider today¡¯s meal nearly vegetarian. Besides, it was grown in a vat and not from an actual chicken, which didn¡¯t exist on Binary Bloom. Imported meat was too expensive for an everyday lunch. She remembered the exquisite dinner she¡¯d had with Twitch before he set out again on his piracy business. They had indulged in real chicken that evening, imported from Dephyr.


    But today was an ordinary day - or so it seemed. The restaurant was largely empty, as it was already past lunchtime. But she had been busy and only now found the time. Her leather satchel on the chair beside her, the uniform jacket slung over the chair, she was finally enjoying her meal. Stir-fried mushrooms were one of her favorites.


    Beyond the twenty-odd tables in the canteen-like restaurant, the hallway leading towards the market was busy but not crowded. At the left-hand wall, the automated kitchen was visible through glass walls. Her mother had once tried to explain to her that being able to see your food being prepared had been a cultural norm ever since cost-cutting in the restaurant industry had become so serious that it lead to years of people falling ill and even dying from food poisoning, and everyone who could spare the time and effort went back to cooking at home. That must have been two or three centuries ago, when most humans still lived on planet Earth.


    Valarie shrugged and speared another mushroom on her fork. She twirled it in the sauce she had chosen - pepper with a hint of honey - and raised the fork to her mouth, when mid-move everything around her suddenly went pitch black.


    The sounds of footsteps outside turned into the sounds of confused stumbling and a few people falling, and inside the canteen someone dropped a bowl that fell to the floor clanging and sloshing its contents over the floor. Then things went quiet as people had stopped in the complete darkness, standing or sitting wherever they were. Not a single light source was left on. Even the status lights on the robots in the auto-kitchen were off.


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    Valarie noticed that there was also no humming of the air supply, and none of the other faint background sounds of Binary Bloom. She carefully put the fork down. She sat still for a moment, as did everyone else. Disorientation.


    Outside, people now started to talk to each other. First couples and groups that had been walking together. Simple verbal signals. ?Honey, I¡¯m over here!¡° or ?Guys, stay where you are. Everyone alright?¡°


    Valarie had been sitting alone. Out of habit she closed her eyes to focus, but it made no difference at all. She recalled the layout of the restaurant and where she was sitting, trying to replace the visual view that had vanished so suddenly with a mental image. When she had some confidence in that, she slowly stood up, keeping her hands on the table, chairs, windows as she walked slowly towards the exit. She had grabbed her satchel and jacket but left her food.


    A few steps ahead and to the right of her, she heard the sound of two people bumping into each other, and then various things falling to the floor. ?Hey¡°, someone said. ?Watch it¡°, the other person said, by the voices both of them males. ?Very funny¡°, the first one answered, ?watching is kind of a problem.¡° - ?Really? I hadn¡¯t noticed.¡°


    Valarie tried to blend out their bickering and walked forward. She heard similar sounds from outside now, and one voice going ?coming through, coming through¡° on repeat, slowly moving. She immediately liked the idea and copied it, herself mumbling ?coming through¡° just loud enough that people within a few steps should¡¯ve been able to hear it.


    Near where here mental image placed the door, someone answered her position calls: ?I¡¯m here. Careful.¡°


    She slowed down and her probing hands found the door frame and another woman standing there. ?Sorry¡°, she said and pulled her hand back. ?Not important¡°, the other woman answered, ?Same idea? Get outside and find out what¡¯s going on?¡°


    Valarie answered in the affirmative, then added: ?The market is right around the corner. If someone knows what¡¯s going on, the news will definitely reach it fast.¡°


    ?Good idea¡°, the other woman said, then grabbed Valarie¡¯s hand, ?Let¡¯s go.¡°

 Gravity

    Elias had taken it calmly to be plunged into darkness. He had been trained for years to react to the unexpected. After confirming that it was not just the main power but everything electrical that was off, he had found the hand-crank in the corner of one tool drawer and closed the three sides of his shop. Partially to keep out thieves, partially so none of the people stumbling around blindly in the perfect darkness fell over his stuff and damaged them or hurt themselves.


    Then the sound of a palm hitting a forehead echoed through the small room.


    ?I¡¯m an idiot.¡°, Elias told himself. Steps sounded out, first on the floor, then on the stairs towards his upstairs study. There, rummaging around he found what he had been looking for, and with a flick of a finger ignited the lighter, then with it the tea candle.


    A warm, yellow light pierced the pitch black, flooding the room in a very faint glow, just enough to make out the main features. He was no longer completely blind. In the dim light, Elias quickly found his reserve of tea candles, then went downstairs again, leaving the one candle above burning like the beacon of a light house. A very small light house.


    Downstairs, he put four candles on suitable flat surfaces throughout the shop and ignited them, so that there was a bit of light illuminating most parts of it. The candle lights attracted people from the nearby market, where everything was still pitch black. No, in the distance Elias could just about make out one more flickering light - someone else had a taste for the old fashioned as well it seemed. It was too far away to make out anything.


    In the darkness and then the dim light, all of that had taken him nearly ten minutes. Just as Elias was starting to consider his next steps, the tapestry of talking and coordinating voices outside was washed away by hushes and ?psst¡° sounds.


    Then he heard, in the distance but now that people quieted down, clear voice of Bloom¡¯s governor, Nico.


    ?Again so everyone can hear it.¡°, Nicodemus could be heard in the darkness ahead, ?We don¡¯t yet know anything, my guess is we were hit by an EMP attack. Don¡¯t know by whom, not sure why.¡°


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    A low murmur rumbled through the market, but quickly died out as people wanted to hear more. It also allowed Elias to take a rough guess that hundreds of people, at least, were in the market.


    ?I see¡°, Nicodemus continued in the distance as Elias edged closer to the narrow door that was the entrance to his shop when it was closed, ?a few faint lights around. So some of you have chemical lights. That is good, much better than pure darkness. But¡°, he spoke up, ?use them sparingly. The air processing units are also off, so for the moment, preserving oxygen is paramount. This might be a long night. I¡¯ll be heading over to engineering next and find out.¡°


    Mumbling in the crowd and voices in the distance shouting something Elias could not understand made it hard to pick out every word that the governor was saying, but Elias caught most of it. Right now, though, Nicodemus was straining to talk over the crowd and it took a few more rounds of hushing until Elias and those near him could hear his voice clearly again: ?Another important thing: The gravity field has its own inertia. Even if we don¡¯t get power back soon, it¡¯ll be half an hour or so before it starts to collapse. I recommend that you all secure your things for zero-G and unless you are required for station operations, get into a room where you¡¯ll be ok when gravity comes back. Tell others who aren¡¯t here.¡°


    Sounds of people stepping aside, everyone making just one or two steps and then standing again, came through the silence after Nicodemus had finished, and was then quickly drowned out by hundreds of people moving about carefully, most in complete darkness, some in the very dim light of the few candles like Elias¡¯s that had been lit somewhere.


    Elias ducked back into his shop and closed the small door. He went upstairs to extinguish the candle, following Nicodemus advice to not waste oxygen on fires that were not strictly needed. Then he sat down in his shop and pondered. There was anyway no use in going out right now, with the market filled by darkness and a crowd. It would take a while for the crowd to disperse, given that everyone had to feel their way around. And he remembered from his training how easily people get lost in darkness. The terms ¡°vestibular system¡° and ¡°proprioceptive cues¡° came to his mind. The human body was a set of interconnected systems, and visual clues were used by many non-visual subsystems for calibration. Elias forced his thoughts back to the moment.


    No power meant no way for him to contact his superiors. Not a problem, he could work autonomously. But a strike on Binary Bloom probably meant that something had changed and he couldn¡¯t get the intelligence.


    ?Right¡°, he said to himself quietly, ?Working blind. Not the first time.¡° In the soft glow of the candles, determination hardened his eyes.

 Volcano

    ?Clearly an electro-magnetic pulse. Powerful, too. We¡¯re far enough away to avoid any damage, but it scrambled some of our sensitive sensors.¡°


    Captain Zala was standing on the bridge of the DSF Volcano, behind the officer working the sensors and navigations panel during the night shift. Her unkempt hair showed she had been summoned to the bridge out of bed.


    ?The Erulas battleship?¡°, she asked. Another window with readings and sensor data appeared on the screen, followed by a stylized map with a plotted course.


    ?Began moving two minutes ago.¡°, the duty officer summed up. ?They are closer to the pirate outpost, so they¡¯ve had about one minute longer than us to analyze the data.¡°


    ?Bring us closer to the station. 90 light seconds. But close to the planet so we can duck behind it if needed.¡°


    ?Aye, captain.¡°


    Zala walked the few steps to her captain position and sat down. Lines moved across the map display at the navigation station, still close enough for her to see. The navigator and the ship AI were going over various course options. It took them half a minute to agree on an optimal solution. Then the navigator signaled the ready.


    Zala gave the command. With a shudder, the DSF Volcano turned and accelerated.


    Seconds later, as she had expected, the communications panel lit up. She tapped on it to accept the call and an Erulas space force uniform appeared on the screen in front of her. The man inside the uniform was slim, with hints of grey hair starting to show on his head. His rank insignia showed him as a one-star general. Zala raised her eyebrows for a split second. That was slightly above what she had expected as a battleship commander.


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    ?General Norge, Battleship Aegis Prime.¡°, the man stated plainly.


    ?Captain Zala, DSF Volcano.¡°, Zala answered, seeing no necessity to provide a more detailed designation.


    The general continued: ?The pirates have been hit by an EMP attack. We are moving to investigate and provide support to our marines on the station. What are your intentions?¡°


    ?Same as yours.¡°, Zala said, ?Investigate and find out what is going on. We plan to stay well clear of the station.¡°


    Space was an unusual battlefield, and the early space forces of Earth had quickly found out that many of their strategies did not apply. Satellites and drones had done plenty to pierce the fog of war earlier in human history, but space was still a different game. There was nowhere to hide and nowhere to run. Inertia meant rapid course changes were near impossible. Stating your intentions openly did rarely give up an advantage and helped avoid misunderstandings.


    ?Understood.¡°, General Norge replied, ?I offer to share sensor data and analysis results.¡°


    Zala imperceptibly shook her head. Typical high-ranking Erulas officers. Never say a word too much. She wondered if they got special training in tight-lipping. Out loud she said: ?Agreed. Once we know the situation down there we can coordinate further steps.¡° - that was a hidden offer of assistance. Erulas had two detachments of marines on the station, they had a vested interest in figuring out quickly if those men and women needed help.


    ?I¡¯ll have my analysts open a channel.¡°, Norge said and then switched off the call.


    On her screen, Zala could see the Aegis Prime accelerate towards the pirate outpost. Not at full burn, but possibly three quarters.


    Then she called the Dephyr headquarters to report.

 Redirection

    ?Text from Yezz.¡°, Twitch hollered from the bridge into the small mess hall of the Grimalkin, where Red and Grubs where having an afternoon tea, complete with biscuits.


    Outside the screen, the darkness of hyperspace was imperceptibly passing by. Space, and with it the light of stars and galaxies, was bent around the Grimalkin, making faster-than-light travel possible.


    The other two were on the bridge within seconds, in the calm but quick manner of experienced spacemen. On a ship as small as the Grimalkin, the artificial gravity field could collapse in less than a minute if some fault caused the generator to fail. It happened rarely, but it happened. For that reason, space ships had hand-rails everywhere, similar to the sailboats of old.


    ?Text only?¡°, Red asked, sitting down next to Twitch.


    ?Yes.¡°, the pilot answered, ?Short burst transmission, to minimize interception chances.¡°


    Grubs took up a standing position to the left and slightly behind Twitch. Unlike the Rusty Bolt, his engineering station was on the same level as the other two, but it was slightly off towards the side. If he wanted to read Twitch¡¯s screen, he had to stand. His cybernetic arm gripped the back of Twitch¡¯s chair. Grubs had the habit of always holding on to something, if possible.


    Twitch decrypted the text message and put it on the screen in front of him. The text was factual, short, in the same tone Yezz had used a few hours ago when she had urged them to send the report ahead.


    ?Drop-off location at the edge of the Junkstorm?¡°, Red wondered.


    Grubs tilted his head slightly. ?Not her usual mode of operation.¡°


    Twitch nodded, turning his head slightly towards Grubs: ?Not the usual cargo, either.¡°


    Then he turned back to the console and copied the coordinates given into the navigation system. They pointed to a seemingly empty region of space, until he brought up the astronomical details. An information window lit up, indicating a rogue planet at that precise location - though by size it was more of a moon.


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    ?Dwarf planet without a sun.¡°, Grubs remarked, ?Probably flung out of some star system millions of years ago, wandering the universe alone.¡°


    Twitch nodded, bringing up all the details the ship database had on the object. It wasn¡¯t much. ?Ten percent Earth gravity¡°, he read, ?Nice choice for a drop-off. Confirms what we think about an alien buyer - someone who wouldn¡¯t want to venture deep into the Junkstorm. It¡¯s a rocky planet. Possible to drill or blast a hole to hide in. Easily predictable course. Pick-up could be days or months later and you¡¯d still not risk losing it to the void.¡°


    Red had not said anything for a while. Her eyes scanned the screen and the text message. The other two turned their heads and looked at her. It took her a few seconds to even notice. Then she said: ?Something is off. A drop-off? How does she guarantee payment? And that location¡­¡°, she trailed off.


    ?What about it?¡°, Grubs asked, ?It¡¯s just a small deviation from our course, no trouble at all.¡°


    ?Exactly!¡°, Red exclaimed, ?It¡¯s too convenient. I¡¯ve never heard of the spot before. And Yezz didn¡¯t mention anything like this before we departed. So what changed her mind? And why?¡°


    ?We could ask.¡°, Twitch suggested.


    Red nodded. ?Let¡¯s do that. But ask for verification. Let me think of something only Yezz would know.¡°


    ?You think it¡¯s a fake, captain?¡°, Grubs asked, ?Despite the encryption?¡°


    Red turned fully towards him and Twitch: ?Maybe a fake, maybe someone is holding a gun to her head. Either way, we need to make sure.¡°


    ?But if they¡¯re holding a gun¡­¡°, Twitch began.


    ?No matter what she writes, we¡¯ll answer in the affirmative. But if it¡¯s false, we know something is wrong and Yezz knows that we know.¡°


    Twitch nodded and started writing an answer. It read: ?Message received. Just to make sure it¡¯s really you:¡° and there he paused, waiting for Red. She shook her head: ?Too obvious. Write instead: ?Just like our first meeting, remember? And then sign it with my name.¡°


    ?That¡¯s a good one.¡°, Grubs remarked, ?Even I don¡¯t know that. And it¡¯s less obvious you¡¯re asking for proof.¡°


    Red smiled: ?It¡¯s our sweet secret. Not because it¡¯s a crazy story, it isn¡¯t. It¡¯s simply nobody¡¯s business.¡°


    Twitch finished the message, then encrypted it to Yezz¡¯s private key. His finger hovered over the ?send¡° button while he looked at Red for final confirmation. She nodded. He tapped the button and the message was off.


    ?Time how long it takes to respond.¡°, Red told Twitch, then stood up. She went back into the small mess room to finish her tea.

 Aegis Prime

    23 minutes had passed since the EMP on Binary Bloom. General Norge had the bridge crew put a timer on the main screen, next to the navigation and sensor data. The Aegis Prime had almost reached its destination position, 500 km away from the pirate outpost in a higher orbit around the planet Aethel.


    The battleship had no viewport or exterior windows. They were a liability during combat. Instead, the space between its outer hull and the inner shell that made up the bridge, crew quarters and other living spaces was used for storage. Water, of which a ship the size of the Aegis Prime needed a good amount, was excellent at stopping both kinetic and energy weapons and dispersing their energy. It also made enemy boarding attempts really interesting to watch.


    ?Still nothing?¡°, the general inquired.


    ?Negative, Sir.¡°, Commander Frason answered. He was the captain of the battleship, but for this mission he felt more like a first officer again, with the general giving most of the orders. And while he largely managed to keep his expression under control, a sliver of annoyance had found its way unto his face.


    Faint pulses on the electromagnetic sensors trained on the pirate outpost appeared and vanished again every 30-40 seconds. They had been doing that for the past six or seven minutes. According to the data analyst on the bridge, it indicated the pirate outpost attempting to restart its fusion power generator.


    There was also something else. A repeating fluctuation that the data analysts were still trying to make sense of. It seemed familiar yet unknown at the same time. He had fed it into the pattern recognition AI and it had suggested it as the faint signals of a dying human communications satellite. Its origin seemed to be at the far side of the planet, opposite the pirate outpost. However, the sensors were unable to triangulate an exact position. If the battleship had been closer or on a regular approach vector, they would have never picked it up. All this made the chief data analyst even more curious. Her name tag said Sgt. Sharma. If one went back far enough in her family tree, old Earth India would appear, but her features and skin color had been smoothed out over generations of humanity mingling in space, and only a hint of them remained.


    As the Aegis Prime took up its temporary orbit near the pirate outpost, the signal vanished behind the planet in a peculiar fashion: Instead of suddenly disappearing, the number of pulses dropped, with gaps appearing between them. Until at last the frequency had dropped to less than one tenth of the original measurements. Sgt. Sharma was checking on it repeatedly in-between her observations of the signals coming from the pirate station. As the battleship closed in, other even weaker signals had appeared there. Most likely sub-system generators and their attempts to restart.


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    ?Sgt. Sharma, status of the station?¡°, her commander relayed the general¡¯s request. Sharma¡¯s attention went to another screen. She read out the measurements of other sensors aloud: ?Gravity fields collapse has begun, zero-point-nine g and falling, will reach zero in approximately twenty minutes. Internal atmosphere estimated to remain breathable for six to eight hours. Power generation still offline. Should have restarted four to five minutes ago under assumed conditions. No hull breaches detected. No ships have taken off.¡°


    ?Roger¡°, the commander acknowledged.


    ?However¡°, Sharma continued,  we have seven ships approaching in hyperspace. Apparently transport ships. Direct course for the station.¡°


    Frason acknowledged: ?Weekly supply for the station. We were expecting it today or tomorrow. Good timing for us, it¡¯ll increase the pressure on the pirates to cooperate if they can¡¯t get their supplies. Send them a message that the station is under blockade and they are to keep a million klicks distance we give them clearance.¡°


    Just then, the communications officer turned around: ?Urgent call from the Dephyr scout.¡°


    The commander acknowledged this as well and tapped on the display to his right, where General Norge could see it as well. The captain of the DSF Volcano appeared. Without so much as a greeting, she stated: ?We got several weird hyperspace readings on the other side of the planet. I¡¯m transmitting their positions right now, though they seem to be moving erratically. Check them out immediately. Our sensors appear to have been hit by the EMP and tell us nonsense.¡°


    Commander Frason turned to Sgt. Sharma at the sensors: ?Check the incoming sensor data and report as soon as you have a reading.¡°


    ?Aye, Sir.¡°, the chief data analyst responded. Just as the commander turned back to his command station, Sgt. Sharma added: ?Sir? We¡¯ve been tracking unclear pulses from those same positions for the past minute or so.¡°


    Frason turned to the video call: ?We detected it as well. Our analysts are working on it.¡°


    ?Border patrol ship.¡°, General Norge stated. That the much smaller Dephyr ship had sensors that competed with the Aegis Prime left only this conclusion.


    Sharma still had to split her attention between the station and the unknown pulses. She directed one of her analysts to the pulses and the other two to the station.


    A moment later, the commander turned to her again, having given other commands to other stations on the bridge in-between. ?How long until they run out of air down there?¡°, he asked.


    Sharma quickly consulted a screen with data on the station. ?Six hours until toxicity reaches dangerous levels by our estimate. Could be faster if there are fires.¡°


    General Norge and Commander Frason exchanged glances. Then the general announced for the entire bridge to hear: ?We stand by and observe for the next hour. After that, we will evacuate our marines and send engineers to support the outpost.¡°

 Reactor

    Shadows danced around the reactor room, bathing most of it in utter darkness. The light they cast was much weaker and more yellow than what the engineers working frantically to restart the reactor were used to. Three oil lamps was all that could be found on short notice, and there was another man standing next to each of the engineers holding the lamp so that the others had both hands free.


    Their task was made even more difficult by the fact that gravity had slowly declined to a fraction of what it used to be. Two of the teams had already secured themselves with ropes to hooks built into the controls exactly for this purpose.


    ?Two, maybe three minutes before we reach zero-G.¡°, the lamp-holder of the third team said, ?We should really strap in.¡°


    ?No time for that.¡°, the engineer he was assisting growled, his eyes narrowed and focussed on the controls in front of him. Ricky Sarron was relatively young, just 28, but he had been around machines for all his life and loved tinkering with them. His head, and essentially whole upper body, inside the reactor control unit, measuring currents, inspecting wires and connectors, figuring out why the damn thing didn¡¯t start despite it should, was all the heaven he needed to be happy.


    ?That¡¯s odd.¡°, Ricky stated, a circuit board in his hand. The panel he had opened to extract it was still open, showing the slot it had been in, with thin traces of scorch marks. ?That¡¯s the frequency modulator. How did that get fried?¡°


    He extracted himself from the reactor and turned to the man holding the lamp: ?Steve, get over to the spare parts cabinet. Second shelf from the top. Should be a few of these.¡°, he said, handing the circuit board to the man. Steve nodded and pushed himself off towards the cabinet at the side of the reactor room. With gravity approaching zero, jumping was easier and faster than walking. Behind him, Ricky hollered to the other teams: ?Check the frequency modulators. Mine was fried.¡°


    Steve reached the cabinet and pulled it open. It took him only a few seconds of rummaging to find a box with two circuit boards identical to the one he had in his hand. He pulled it out and jumped back towards the reactor, missing his target spot by about two steps but quickly recovering. He handed one board over to Ricky, who immediately disappeared into the machine again.


    The jumble of cables and controllers inside the control unit surrounded Ricky again, just as he felt his legs floating and only returning to the ground after several seconds. Gravity had dropped so far that small balancing changes turned into jumps.


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    ?More light here.¡°, he ordered Steve, with a calm voice. With a series of directions he guided the other man until the light fell straight into the box behind the still open panel. He pushed the spare circuit board inside, making sure all the pins aligned correctly. Then he closed the panel and pulled himself out of the control unit.


    ?That should be the last replacement. Let¡¯s try again.¡°


    With a nod, Steve turned to the outside of the control unit and pressed a series of buttons in carefully orchestrated order. This time, unlike the ones before, the reactor went through the cold start procedure and the sound of the coils creating the magnetic fields inside announced their success.


    ?Got it.¡°, Ricky let the other teams know. ?90 seconds until we have emergency power.¡°


    ?Thanks Ricky.¡°, a voice out of the darkness answered. At the closer reactor, the engineer closed the panel he had been working on and moved over to the control unit, preparing a regular start. Once the third reactor supplied power again, starting up the other two would be much easier.


    ?You still got the fried board?¡°, Ricky asked Steve, now that there was nothing immediate to do for him.


    ?Of course. Here.¡°, Steve said, handing him the damaged frequency modulator board.


    Ricky inspected it in the light of the oil lamp, then shook his head slowly: ?Not enough light. I¡¯ll take this to the workshop once we got power.¡°


    A holler came from reactor two. ?Hey Ricky. My modulator is fried as well.¡°


    ?Get the second board to number two.¡°, Ricky told Steve, followed by a curse as he started floating away from the reactor, pushed by a small movement of his feet. He extended his arm and grabbed a railing, holding on. The gravity field had collapsed entirely in the meantime and Binary Bloom was under zero-G.


    While Steve floated away, Ricky tucked the fried board into his belt, then used his now free hand to adjust the startup sequence by pressing buttons and adjusted dials, as needed. Inside the reactor, the controlled fusion started up again, and with a flicker and a dozen clicks, the lights inside the reactor room switched on.


    ?Powering up number one.¡°, resounded through the room, followed by ?Powering up two.¡° As the other two teams went through the startup sequences on their respective reactors. They were swinging from the ropes attached to their belts on one end and the control units on the other.


    A short distance away, another engineer floated towards the exit. Without the usual wireless communication, the technical team of the station had to return to messengers to exchange vital information.


    Half a minute later, shortly after the messenger had exited the reactor room, reactor two completed the initialization process. Steve had pushed himself back and was on his way back, and the messenger was exiting the reactor room.


    A holler came through the room: ?One is still failing. I¡¯ll check the modulator.¡°


    ?No more spare boards.¡°, Steve shouted back.


    Meanwhile, reactor two was spinning up.

 Control

    Nicodemus Hallows was floating just above a chair in Binary Bloom¡¯s main control room, though right now it controlled exactly nothing at all. Like the other two people in the room, he had tied himself to the chair, which was holding on to the floor with magnets. A bit of slack in the band he had used caused him to bounce around gently in the chair, mostly floating just above the place he should be sitting on.


    The room was dark, with half a dozen candles providing a minimum amount of light. Just enough to see, not enough to read. They had been waiting for something to change for the past ten or so minutes. There was nothing else for Nicodemus to do but wait. The engineers were working on it. He was no engineer and would only be in the way.


    Just then, the lights flickered, and after a short moment turned on fully. Nicodemus closed his eyes, blinded by the sudden brightness. It took him some seconds to adjust. The control consoles were restarting. Power had returned to Binary Bloom.


    ?Gonat¡°, he spoke to the man on his left, ?leave the gravity field generators offline until we are running smoothly.¡°, then he turned to the woman on his right, ?Dora, internal lighting first, that¡¯ll let people around the station know that power is back.¡°


    He glanced at his watch, then at the time display on the console. Like many small electronics, his watch had stopped working when the EMP hit. Today, Nicodemus congratulated him on being a fan of antique technology. His watch was not a smartwatch, but a really old fashioned one with hands. It was still showing the time of the EMP.


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    ?25 minutes, give or take a bit.¡°, he mumbled to himself, comparing the two times.


    While the console in front of him was running through self-diagnostics, an engineer floated into the room from the corridor leading towards the nearby reactor room.


    ?Two reactors are coming back. We don¡¯t have a needed spare part for the third.¡°, he said, pushing himself towards Nicodemus.


    ?Got it.¡°, the governor said, turning to the controls. The display showed the system ready. Nicodemus pressed the intercom button, took a deep breath and spoke into the microphone: ?Everyone, listen. Power has been restored but we lack full output. Until instructed otherwise, turn off electronics you don¡¯t need, especially power-hungry devices like ovens or hologram units. Over the next minutes, we will bring gravity back up, at first very slowly so stuff that is floating around now settles down gently instead of crashing. Hold on to something and orient yourself towards the floor.¡°


    Then he nodded towards Gonat: ?Do as I said. Very gently until we have a quarter G or so.¡°


    He turned around to see the engineer, named Masaki, holding on to the control console next to him. ?Nico¡°, the man began, ?The damage we¡¯ve seen in the reactor room shouldn¡¯t have been there.¡°


    Nicodemus turned fully towards him, his eyebrows raised: ?What do you mean?¡°


    ?Parts inside the shielding were fried. I don¡¯t know details, I left as soon as possible to let you all know the situation.¡°


    ?Thanks.¡°, Nicodemus answered, ?I¡¯ll head down there as soon as we have some gravity and the core systems are running.¡°

 Insider

    The guard room was two doors down from the control center, slightly closer to the market. It was fairly small, with two tables, a now dark wall display and eight lockers, two of which were unused.


    Three guards were in the room. Chief Elroy, Valarie and their youngest member, Bruce. The two men were polar opposites. Elroy with first hints of grey in his hair, a small belly and wide shoulders, every inch of him showing confidence and experience. Bruce on the other hand was slender, early 20s and even younger looking, and always seemed to be nervous, mostly because he couldn¡¯t keep his fingers still for more than three seconds. At the moment, he was twirling a fidget spinner, that old Earth toy that every fifty years or so had a revival.


    Elroy had been speaking to the other two for a minute or so. Now he summed up: ?That means we have no communicators and no CCTV for no idea how long. And we don¡¯t know what is going on all over Bloom. I expect the others here shortly, but let¡¯s not wait for them. You two will be the first patrol. Try to cover as much ground as possible and report back here in about half an hour with updates on the situation.¡°


    Valarie and Bruce nodded.


    ?Good¡°, the chief continued, ?Bruce, you patrol the market and the main residential area. Most crowded, highest chance of accidents. Val, you go past the market into the industrial and storage areas. If our guys are still standing guard at the ventilation shaft, send them back here. More important things to do.¡°


    With that, Elroy left the room and walked over to command, while Valarie and Bruce headed off in the opposite direction, their ways being the same until the market entrance.


    ?Want a bet on who it was, Erulas, Dephyr or Dangorod?¡°, the young man asked Valarie while they were walking.


    ?I doubt we¡¯ll ever know for sure.¡°, she replied, ?Doesn¡¯t strike me as the thing anyone would just step forward and announce it was them.¡°


    ?And it¡¯s not like it worked or anything.¡°, Bruce continued the thought, ?I mean, we¡¯re still here, power is back up. What for?¡°


    Valarie shrugged. They continued onwards in silence for a short while, until their ways parted. ?See you in thirty¡°, Bruce said as he walked off at the edge of the market, circling its perimeter first.


    Valarie continued on straight through on the main way. With power restored, some of the merchants had returned to their shops and were assessing the damage and if anything was lost.


    ?Hey Sally¡°, she greeted a spice merchant she knew well, ?Everything alright?¡°


    ?Mostly¡°, the woman replied, ?A few small items are still missing, probably floated away when gravity failed. Found a few pieces from Tommie¡¯s shop in my stuff, so they¡¯re probably somewhere with my neighbors.¡°


    ?Good luck¡°, Valarie said, ?If anything doesn¡¯t turn up, let me know later, gotta run now.¡°


    ?Not worried about that.¡°, Sally responded, ?Thieves on Bloom? Please. Nico would space them.¡°


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    Valarie waved while walking away at a brisk pace, through the market. A greeting here and there, but she didn¡¯t stop. Eight or ten minutes by her reckoning since the gravity field had been restored. She couldn¡¯t tell for sure, her tablet had been a victim of the EMP and she¡¯d left it in the guard room. With some luck it could be repaired, but that would have to wait.


    At the end of the market, a small group of people tried to stop her, seeing her guard jacket. It was essentially a uniform, the station had never bothered to get more than a jacket and a full on uniformed police force would¡¯ve been out of place on a pirate outpost anyways. She brushed them off, telling them that she didn¡¯t know more and that there will probably be an announcement soon.


    She had reached the corridors behind the market, which were a mixture of offices, shops and storage spaces. She continued at a slightly slower pace, keeping her eyes open, checking in on any place with an open door. They were all either empty or the owners were inside, cleaning up or sorting out broken items.


    Valarie exchanged a few words here and there, getting affirmations that aside from the zero-G damage, things were ok. In the corridors she met a few people on their way to the infirmary, most of them with minor injuries. Only one man had to be carried by his friends with what looked to be a broken arm.


    What had not returned were the busy noises of the station. People were up and about, but there was little chatter and none of the small sounds of various tablets, watches and computers that usually created a thin tapestry of electronic noise.


    Even the sounds of people disappeared into the far background as she went into the back parts of Binary Bloom, where little but storage could be found. The distant humming of the station¡¯s life support had returned, a sound everyone living there was so used to that its absence had been noticed more than its presence. Many of the rooms here were never fully outfitted, a labyrinth of halls carved out of the ancient alien husk that Bloom had been built into. Most of these storages were locked, their owners busy with their workshops or stores. Valarie knew that some of these storage units were outright halls - three or four stories tall, some up to fifty meters long.


    Near the beginning of this section had been one such hall open, the owner inspecting his goods. Everything had been well packaged, and the slow return of gravity had made all the boxes fall gently to the ground, with just a few scratches and dents on the outside.


    Now, nearly at the end of the section, she spotted another door where light was shining through the half-open door into the corridor. It was one of those large gates with a regular-sized door set into it so that if one wasn¡¯t moving cargo, the big door could remain closed. No sounds were coming from the inside.


    A small sign near the door identified this storage unit to belong to Yezzania Senglu. Valarie pushed the door open, ready to ask as before if everything was fine. The words died on her throat, three steps into the combined storage and office that was now a mess of scattered furniture and crates.


    Halfway between her and the center of the room lay the body of Yezz in a pool of blood, a good-sized chunk of her torso blown off and scattered over the floor towards Valarie, her face contorted, her right hand still holding a laser pistol small enough to be easy to hide under ordinary clothes. Her skin was already pale, her tattoos had stopped glowing, but the reflected light shining across the blood indicated it as still liquid.


    Valarie gasped. Her eyes darted around the room, but found no current threats. She stepped closer to the body, careful to avoid the pool of blood. It was Yezz, no doubt about it. A faint smell of fresh blood was in the air. Valarie walked slowly around the corpse, searching for clues. Once she had reached the opposite side, she looked up and found the impact of shrapnel to the left of the door leading into the corridor.


    She left the room with quick steps, and took three deep breaths as soon as she had exited. Then she sorted her thoughts. Nico had to know about this, and the scene should be guarded so nobody disturbed it. ?The air shaft¡°, the mumbled to herself. If one or both of the guards there had remained in place, she could send them to alarm the governor. ?No¡°, she corrected herself. She would go. She had no desire to stand guard next to a fresh corpse.

 Reception

    The Felindar ship had been directed to the government section of the space port, a healthy distance away from the civilian facilities. Escorted by a dozen Erulas¡¯ fighters, it slowly descended from the sky towards the largest of the three landing pads.


    A fine example of the most popular Felindar style, the ship was a sleek, feathered dart. Its elongated diamond shape tapered to a bow that seemed thin from this distance but was still about ten meters across. Near the end, four fin-like structures housed the primary engines. A number of recesses sections in these fins made them look like feathers from a distance. At slightly over two hundred meters long and sixty wide, it made a majestic entrance.


    President Vance was waiting inside the armored welcome hall. While diplomatic protocol made an attack unlikely, a pilot error could be just as disastrous. Besides, it never hurt to be unnecessarily careful. She took in the hall that was so seldomly used. The transparent aluminum splitting it neatly in half. The readings off to the left-hand wall showed the atmospheric conditions in the other half. She refreshed her memory with a quick glance at them. Denser atmosphere, higher oxygen content, eighty-two percent Earth gravity. It was common diplomatic protocol between civilized alien races to provide visitors with their home environment.


    ?Touchdown in one minute.¡°, a space port staff member informed the waiting officials. As the president had instructed, she was accompanied by Minister of External Affairs and Chief Diplomat Gordon, Minister of Science, Technology and Alien Affairs Krisi and Minister of Trade and Cultural Affairs Alhan.


    Gordon was quietly discussing details with his undersecretary. Krisi and Alhan were chatting with each other, their staff standing by quietly or reading over the prepared information on their tablets one more time. Four staff members for each minister.


    Vance herself was accompanied by three senior advisors, three senior diplomats and her personal assistant.


    At both sides of the delegation, a security detail of six blended into the background, scanning the room with calm, trained glances.


    ?What a show.¡°, Amara Vance mumbled to the diplomat on her left.


    ?Indeed, it is.¡°, he answered, ?But state visits from alien races happen once in four, five years. And the Felindar have only sent an envoy to Erulas once before. The show must match the event, and this is a rare one.¡°


    ?Of course.¡°, Amara sighed. She turned to her right: ?Are the translators ready?¡°


    ?Both human and AI translators are in the booth and ready.¡°, the advisor replied.


    Amara nodded. Her glance returned to the still empty alien section of the hall. Then she quickly checked on her ministers and their entourage. She nodded approvingly as she looked over each of them. The small earpiece she was, like most of the delegation members, wearing came to life. ?Final sound check. Madam president, all ready. Alien psychologists on channel one, additional diplomats and secret service on channel two.¡°


    She confirmed: ?Reading you clearly.¡°


    The staff member from before looked up from his tablet: ?Ships has landed.¡°, he informed the waiting officials, then quietly left the room. Some of the officials took a last check through their prepared documents and statements on their tablets.


    Outside, a lengthy gangway extended from the building towards the landed Felindar ship. It quickly crossed the roughly sixty meters of safety distance and connected to the marked exit, a sucking sound around its docking collar indicating the moment the connection sealed off. There was now an uninterrupted home-planet atmosphere connection between the ship and the welcome hall.


    Three minutes later, the door directly opposite president Vance opened and the Felindar delegation began to enter. Standing slightly lower than humans, Felindar were actually larger, but being four-legged creatures most of their body was horizontal rather than vertical. Feathers covered their bodies where clothes were not hiding them. In fact, compared to humans they wore much less clothing. The officials had decorated wing-tips. The Felindar rarely used their wings for flight anymore and hadn¡¯t for thousands of years. Much like humans lost tails, the aliens¡¯ wings were devolving. They still mattered for courtship.


    Similar to their human counterparts, the Felindar had a small security team, followed by officials and their entourage. All in all, fifteen avian aliens entered the room. After it had become clear that this was the full delegation, Vance and each of her ministers dismissed one or two people from their entourage to equalize the size of the human delegation. These people would join the others in the conference room and provide their insights through the earpieces.


    ?Welcome to Erulas. I am Amara Vance, president of the planet of Erulas.¡°, she said as she stepped forward. The translation quickly sounded through the speakers in the other side of the hall.


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    A colorful and decorated Felindar in the center of their delegation likewise stepped forward and spoke. This time, the speakers on the human side of the hall came to life with the translation: ?My name is Karzt Koptkek, head diplomat of her majesty Queen Chlocle IV of the Dremvtte Constellation.¡°


    ?Only two names.¡°, her earpiece gave context, ?Means a high official. Grammar indicates male gender.¡°


    Amara and Karzt proceeded to introduce their respective seconds. She introduced her three ministers, he his two primary diplomats.


    Formalities exchanged, Amara pointed to her left side of the hall, where two matching tables and a number of chairs for each race had been set up. Felindar chairs looked nothing like human furniture. The closest resemblance would be a weight-lifting bench - the Felindar would pluck their bodies down on the cushioned top and rest their legs on its sloped sides. They had eight limbs in total, four legs, two wings and two arms.


    The Felindar diplomat agreed, and the tables and chairs moved towards the center on small wheels underneath each one. The leading members of each delegation, four on the human side and three for the Felindar, sat down.


    ?What gives us the pleasure of your visit?¡°, Amara asked, somewhat bluntly but knowing that the translators would do a good job adding the required Felindar courtesy.


    ?Her majesty has found it a good moment to contact you humans from this region of the galaxy (translator note: referring to the Junkstorm) due to the¡°, Here Karzt had made a short pause for dramatic effect, but it got lost in the translation, ?considerable amount of ruffled feathers you have caused nearby civilizations over the years. It appears from rumors we have gathered that things are reaching a boiling point. An appropriate time to offer our services too intervene on your behalf.¡°


    Amara tried to read the bird-like face sitting across from her, but couldn¡¯t. She was relying on her experts to spot emotions and things between the lines. She was right to do so. Seconds later, her earpiece informed her: ?He¡¯s confident. Sure we can¡¯t refuse. An appropriate answer would be to ask for a price.¡°


    She pointed to her right: ?Minister Gordon is in charge of external affairs and diplomacy.¡° She knew that Gordon had received the same information through his earpiece.


    Without missing a beat, Gordon picked up the ball: ?Our relations with our neighbors are of course of paramount importance to us. We are thankful for your offer, head diplomat Karzt Koptkek. What can we offer her majesty in return?¡°


    The Felindar looked over to Gordon. Amara had referred to him only by his last name. She knew that in Felindar society, that gave him a higher standing than introducing him with his full name. It made him appear as her equal, not subordinate, so the Felindar would not see it as being handed off to a lower official.


    But Karzt was equally well trained. With a gesture, he referred the matter to the diplomat on his right, so that the two officials were now speaking diagonally across the table, creating an invisible wall between him and Amara. She understood it as a subtle indicator of disapproval. The experts in her ear agreed. Her respect for the head diplomat grew. He was clearly worthy his position.


    ?Our offer, as a starting point for negotiations of course, is original recordings of human operas and musicals with a current market value of ten thousand intergalactic credits, and the return of a few items taken from various ships in what your race refers to as ?acts of piracy¡®.¡°, the other diplomat introduced the Felindar¡¯s offer, ?We have a list of these later items that we are interested in.¡°


    Amara kept her neutral expression. She knew that human art, especially music, was popular among the Felindar and a few other races they traded with. Ten thousand intergalactic was a considerable sum, one could buy a medium-sized spaceship or a small company with that amount. But it was hardly a sum to send high-ranking diplomats for.


    ?If you can transfer that list of items, we will be happy to discuss them.¡°, Gordon answered diplomatically, without committing to much.


    ?Of course.¡°, the Felindar diplomat immediately fired back, pulling out a handheld computer of the Felindar style - more similar to an old-Earth laptop than a modern human tablet computer. ?If you would receive a data transfer on the standard trade protocol?¡°


    One of Gordon¡¯s advisors held her tablet up and pressed a button on its display, opening up reception into a secure enclave.


    It took only a few seconds to transfer and translate the message. The advisor showed the result to Gordon, who quickly scanned it and turned back to the alien delegation, saying ?Nothing I see that could not be discussed, however we will need time to ascertain which of these items we can obtain and what the timelines would be. As you are of course aware, humans are no less politically fractured than Felindar, and we will likely have to reach out to other political entities for at least some of these items.¡°


    The alien diplomats calmly let Gordon say his piece, then wiggled the tips of their wings - the Felindar equivalent of nodding agreement.


    With a rapid exchange of glances, minister Krisi let Amara know she would take over and Amara agreed. So Krisi spoke next: ?Let us meet again here today evening. Say eleven Royal Felindar hours from now. By then we should have some answers for you. We can provide you with accommodations adapted to your needs, if you wish.¡°


    ?Thank you¡­¡°, Karzt took back the reigns on the Felindar side, trailing off in the interracial diplomatic way of saying ?and you are?¡° without actually speaking the words.


    ?Of course.¡°, Krisi replied, ?Minister Krisi, responsible among other things for Alien Affairs.¡°


    The Felindar head diplomat tilted his head slightly, then closed the topic: ?Your offer is most hospitable. We do not want to intrude and will retire to our ship. We will be back in eleven hours.¡°

 Top Level

    ?Jones. Your mission is now a top level priority.¡°, the unfamiliar voice from Elias¡¯ hidden hyperspace comm unit announced seconds into his urgent call to headquarters. It was the second time he was using what was supposed to be an emergency backup communication channel, so exactly for circumstances like this.


    ?Agent Thorne, sir¡°, Elias answered. There was only one Jones who would use his name as the first word in a conversation within the military intelligence branch.


    ?Report!¡°


    ?The outpost suffered a complete power failure, most likely an EMP attack. Most small electronics are crashed or fried.¡°, Elias began, reiterating the recent events on Binary Bloom as succinctly as he could. His military-grade comm unit was likely one of the few personal electronics on the station still operational. It did not have an independent power supply, so he had waited until power had returned and then immediately made the call.


    Norman Jones listened to the report as Elias gave additional details, without interrupting him.


    ?What about the Erulas marines?¡°, he asked at the end.


    ?Uncertain. I heard some rumors that they retreated to their troop transports when power failed.¡°, Elias told him. It would make sense to get to a ship. High-energy pulses were common in space and all interstellar spacecraft were shielded against them. Since the solar system Binary Bloom was in had no inhabited planets, there were only a few purely interplanetary ships, shuttles to visit the surface for leisure mostly, one or two asteroid miners. Most of the docked ships were outfitted for interstellar travel.


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    Jones nodded. ?Nobody drops an EMP on a space station for no reason. And right now the same item is on the mind of many, both human and alien.¡°


    The intelligence chief did not complete the thought, even on encrypted channels using cautious language that did not spell out details he could assume the other party of the conversation knew.


    ?Understood. I¡¯ll get back to you as soon as I have solid intel about it.¡°, Elias affirmed.


    They finished the call and closed the channel. Using the hidden comm unit always increased the chance of discovery for Elias, so it was a last resort. He looked around in his private rooms. The mess caused by the gravity field failing was relatively small, at least compared to some of the shops he had passed by on his way here. It could wait.


    Elias picked up a tablet from the floor and tried in vain to switch it on. He had not expected it to work, but it wouldn¡¯t hurt to try. He sighed and dropped it on the nearby couch, then made his way towards the exit. Closing and locking the door behind him, Elias went out again into the station. It was still in disarray, with its residents cleaning up. The way these quasi-outlaws supported each other was visible everywhere as Elias walked past homes, shops and small manufacturing plants. Everywhere, people had pulled together, neighbors helping each other, groups of strangers doing whatever one person could not.


    The atmosphere within Binary Bloom had changed slightly. Not just the literal one, which had a faint smell of stale air to it that slowly disappeared now that the oxygen generators, CO2 scrubbers and ventilation systems were back on.


    Elias moved through the corridors quickly. People were rushing here and there to manage the disorder, so he blended right in. He needed to reach Yezz, quickly.

 Supply

    ?So to sum all that up¡°, Nicodemus Hallows said from the video screen of the Aegis Prime, ?Major systems are coming back online, minor damage all around, lots of injuries but most are minor. Thanks for your offer of assistance.¡°


    ?Still valid.¡°, General Norge replied, ?We do have a fully equipped trauma center on board. If your medical facilities can¡¯t handle a case, we can take him. Well, as soon as you get at least one docking bay working again.¡°


    In the background, out of view of the pirate governor, the data analysis team of Sgt. Sharma was still working to figure out the hyperspace pulses behind the planet.


    On the screen, the pirate governor was looking weary and exhausted from the past few hours. Even so, there was respect in the general¡¯s voice. The pirate had demonstrated that he had a capable team down there, and was able to lead them. Getting things under control so quickly was an astonishing feat.


    ?General¡°, the pirate continued, ?We¡¯ve lost a good amount of food and other essentials in this. I don¡¯t have a full inventory yet, but I don¡¯t think we still have the usual amount of reserves. If you want to help, let the supply ships we are expecting through. I¡¯ll pay them extra for having to stay longer if you insist they can¡¯t leave again until we¡¯ve sorted this out.¡°


    Norge gave this a second, with a quick glance sideways to the monitor showing the convoy nearing quickly. ?Reasonable request.¡°, he said, ?I¡¯ll allow two of the haulers to dock.¡°


    ?Oh come on!¡°, Nico pleaded from the screen, ?This ain¡¯t the time for games. Two out of three just out of principle?¡°


    ?Two out of ¡­?¡°, the general began, then stopped himself. ?I¡¯ll get back to you.¡°, he concluded and ended the call. He turned to the sensors team: ?Scan those freighters again and tell me their status!¡°


    ?Sir¡°, Sgt. Sharma responded. She had been waiting for him to finish his call. ?They aren¡¯t slowing down and will reach the one million line in¡°, she glances to her side to read the current number from a display, ?fourteen seconds.¡°


    ?Battle stations!¡°, the general commanded, ?These are not supply ships.¡°, then more quietly to himself and those immediately around him: ?What are these pirates up to?¡°


    Men and women were now rushing about, commands were given through headset communicators to other parts of the ship. A well-practiced urgency. In training, the Aegis Prime could be ready for combat in forty-five seconds.


    Fourteen seconds later, the seven dots on the hyperspace sensors crossed the one-million klicks line without so much as slowing down. One second after that, seven large transport vessels dropped out of hyperspace halfway between the Aegis Prime and Binary Bloom. Sgt. Sharma nodded in appreciation of those navigators¡¯ precision.


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    The ships had entered normal space with zero velocity relative to Binary Bloom. Human ships did not do that. They needed some speed to enter hyperspace and likewise left it with at least a few percent of light speed in their direction of travel.


    The general¡¯s jaw tightened. He had seen this before, many years ago. The memory still haunted him from time to time. The utter inferiority of the human space fleet. The humbling defeats they suffered and the so rare lucky victories that had never seemed to matter much.


    The haulers vaporized their outer shells, thin layers of meta-metals that had hidden the actual space ships inside and created a false sensor echo. Underneath each one, two dozen cubes connected by long struts appeared. Some of the cubes were clearly propulsion systems, some contained fusion generators, others hyperdrives. Many of the outer cubes were weapon platforms. All the individual parts of a spaceship were present, set up so that most shots fired at the vessel they made up would pass through it in-between the structures. It was the typical design of the Qyrl.


    ?Human warships.¡°, the AI translation rang across the bridge, ?Stand down or you will be fired upon.¡°


    General Norge had no intention of taking orders from the Qyrl. ?Give me¡°, he once more asked Sgt. Sharma, ?an estimate of their capabilities ASAP.¡°, and without waiting for the affirmative, turned to the communications officer who had done right patching the broadcast through without asking first: ?Answer by asking identity and intention. Broadcast so the Dephyr¡¯s receive it, too. At the same time, send an encrypted burst to HQ, seven Qyrl warships, engagement immanent.¡°


    He turned back to the main screen in front of him, now showing the tactical situation.


    ?Disruptors?¡°, Commander Frason asked. He had been studying the screen while the general had barked his orders. With a grin passing quickly over his hardened face, General Norge nodded. Human technology had advanced since the Qyrl war. The twin Disruptor beams that the Aegis Prime carried could shatter Qyrl shields, making them susceptible to ordinary human weaponry. At least in theory. A badly damaged Qyrl ship wreck with barely functioning shield projectors was the only testing ground the Erulas weapon experts had to try the technology.


    ?We¡¯ll find out today.¡°, Frason mumbled to himself. With a glance, a nod and a few unspoken words, he assumed command of his ship again. He was more suited to guide the ship through the upcoming battle than the general, and he knew the Aegis Prime and her capabilities better.


    He quickly gave his orders to the weapons crew and checked on the ready status of various crews on the ship. Medbay, fighter squad, engineering all went green within the next few seconds. Then one by one the weapon systems of the battleship set their status to ready. Out of the corner of his eyes he noticed that the general had moved over to the data analyst team to assess the enemy.


    ?Fast attack ships.¡°, one of the analysts in Sharma¡¯s team was interpreting the sensor readings for the general, ?I¡¯d classify them as light cruisers. Total armament of all seven about twice ours. Moderate defensive capabilities. But they are within mass driver range.¡°


    General Norge nodded. The heavy mass drivers of the Aegis Prime were its most potent weapon, and could be set to scatter shots, greatly increasing the chance to hit parts of the Qyrl vessels. They could accelerate hardened projectiles to almost one percent light speed. Technically speaking, in the empty void of space, they didn¡¯t have a range per se. But across the hundreds of thousands or even millions of kilometers distance in most space battles, they were too slow to actually hit something, and their tactical purpose was area denial. But at the short range of a few hundred kilometers, the enemy would have no time for evasive maneuvers. Neither would the Aegis Prime. They would need the trauma center today, and not for wounded from the pirate outpost.

 Technicalities

    ?So what you are telling me¡°, Nico said, once again properly sitting in a chair instead of hovering above it, ?is that the EMP happened inside of Bloom?¡°


    Micah and Ricky both nodded. Micah spoke first: ?Bloom is deep inside the heliosphere and doesn¡¯t need deep space shielding. But its hull is still metal. An EMP bomb exploding near it, on the outside, would wreck havoc of all kinds, but the reactor control units, they¡¯re shielded. The only way the frequency modulators can get fried is if there was a strong current induced into the wires themselves.¡°


    ?We¡¯ve run the calculations twice.¡°, Ricky added, ?An EMP bomb exploding outside Bloom would have to be nuclear and powerful enough that we¡¯d still be seeing the auroras from it. You know, because in space a nuke doesn¡¯t make a fireball or shockwave, it¡¯s all radiation.¡°


    Nico leaned back in his chair, eyes unfocused. ?Makes no sense.¡°, he said softly, more to himself than to the other two. ?What for? And ignoring that, why take that risk? It¡¯s not like you can use the confusion to run away. Without power, the hangar doors won¡¯t open.¡°


    ?Unless¡°, Micah began, twice before Nico turned his attention back to him, ?Well, I thought about that smuggler depot we found. Pretty much right before this happened. That¡¯s a hefty coincidence. And those guys were not above shooting me.¡°


    Nicodemus let him finish while he slowly folded his hands, fingers intertwined. ?There were a few oddities in that room that Baer and me noticed. Fetch him and go check it out. We posted two guards there as well, ...¡° - he was interrupted by the door flying open and hitting the wall where for a long time he had wanted to put a stopper but had never gotten around to it. In the doorframe, a sweaty, exhausted and slightly pale young woman with a guard jacket stood for a second, then stepped into the room, breathing heavily. ?Valarie¡°, Micah exclaimed.


    ?Nico!¡°, Valarie said between breaths, ?We have¡­ dead¡­ both¡­¡° she put her hands to her hips and bent over slightly, trying to catch her breath so she could speak normally. Then, still gasping, she came up again and pulled out her factual side: ?We have three bodies in the back sections. Two guards and nearby one shop owner. Might be more victims. I came as fast as I could.¡°, she pressed out between still heavy breathing.


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    ?Accidents?¡°, Nico asked, already knowing the answer from Valarie¡¯s manner but wanting to be sure.


    ?Weapon wounds. All three.¡°, the young guards woman shattered his hopes.


    Nico¡¯s eyes twitched, darting left and right as he processed this new and shocking information. He turned to Micah and Ricky: ?You¡¯re right.¡°, he plainly said, ?Too much to not be related. Tell Baer to take however many guards he can find. Valarie¡°, he turned around, ?you need to show Baer where exactly they are, ok?¡° - Nico had noticed that Valarie was not feeling well and was probably overwhelmed by what she had seen. ?You don¡¯t need to get close, but we¡¯ll lose valuable time if Baer needs to search around. Can you do that?¡°


    Valarie straightened up: ?Yes¡°, she simply said.


    Moments later, she led Baer and the three other guards they could find near the control center back into the bowels of Binary Bloom, which suddenly felt colder and less safe to her than before.


    Nico was left behind alone, since the two engineers had also gone to continue their repair works. Many of the station¡¯s secondary systems were still damaged or broken.


    ?Damn it all.¡°, he said to himself, ?What¡¯s going on all of a sudden?¡°


    Then he went over to the control console and pressed a few buttons, locking the hangar bay doors in place. He made a quick entry into his log book: ?Multiple murders on the station, lockdown initiated.¡°. There were not that many entries in the book, as Nicodemus wrote down only the important things and not the everyday events or decisions. The last entry was three days old by now, it was a short note about the marines occupying the hangar.


    He looked around the control room. Half of the displays still showed nothing or only symbols of systems out of order. He was alone right now, despite the room having three desks. Normally there would be two people here, with the third place filled only when things got exceptionally busy. But at the moment, everyone he could spare was fixing things or cleaning up debris.


    He went over to the second station and sat down. The communications units were patched to this place, though they could be opened from the other two desks if necessary. He needed to let the Erulas battleship know why he put the outpost on lockdown so they didn¡¯t misunderstand and thought they need to come and save their marines.


    ?Not that the bastards couldn¡¯t hold the docking bay against half of Bloom if they had to.¡°, he mumbled to himself. Those who didn¡¯t know better would be surprised by how few people on Binary Bloom actually had weapons.

 Backstab

    Captain Zala had had the right hunch. When the Qyrl ships revealed themselves, the DSF Volcano was close to the planet Aethel, and with the pirate outpost between it and the Qyrl, there was a reasonable chance they had not been detected. In any case, the Qyrl now had enemies on two sides.


    They had, of course, received the broadcast telling them to stand down. Zala had noticed the plurals of ?warships¡°. It might be a translation thing, or they had detected her ship after all. ?Only one way to find out.¡°, she said to herself.


    ?Battle ready!¡°, she gave the order via intercom to the entire crew. Her primary order was to ensure the pirates didn¡¯t run away with their loot, whatever it was. She couldn¡¯t contact HQ for orders in this new situation without revealing her presence. But if the Qyrl got their hands on the mystery object, it would be so much harder to turn it into space dust.  And why else would they be here, now, in clear breach of the peace treaty? She had heard the stories from the Qyrl war. Even with the Erulas battleship, in an open battle the best they could hope for was to take down two or three of the Qyrl ships. She was betting on the element of surprise.


    ?Do we still have data connection to the Aegis Prime?¡°, she asked Khon. The corporal nodded and then added verbally: ?Just an open connection for now because neither us nor them have new data to share. But it¡¯s still there. If we transmit¡­¡°,


    ?We risk revealing our presence and position.¡°, Zala finished the sentence, ?I know. Prepare a transmission of our targets, attack vectors and deployed firepower and send it out the moment we attack. Once we open fire there¡¯s nothing to hide anyway.¡°


    Khon acknowledged and prepared the transmission. The weapons officer was setting the targets, using passive sensors only. It would be twenty or thirty seconds until they could fire them in a coordinated burst. Time they didn¡¯t have.


    Ten seconds later, they received another broadcast: ?This is the battleship Aegis Prime. Unknown vessels, identify yourself and state your intent.¡°


    Zala nodded. She had expected the Erulans to put up a fight, but now she was certain. Good move. ?Announce when ready, fire on my mark.¡°, she told her bridge crew.


    The Qyrl battleships answered by exploding. Capsules on the outside cubes of their disjointed structures explosively released trillions of tiny particles that an electromagnetic field forced into a dust cloud that moved at a few percents of light speed around the ships. Dust shields. They would simply swallow and harmlessly radiate away any energy weapon attack, blow up any missiles or other explosive projectiles well outside the actual ship armor, and even absorb the energy of kinetic weapons.


    ?Fire!¡°, Zala ordered, ?All weapons.¡°. She knew some of them were not ready yet, but every second mattered now. The Qyrl ships had not activated their dust shields all at once, some were lagging behind. And it took a few seconds for the dust clouds to stabilize and gain their full strength. It took a ton of energy to maintain a dust shield properly, so they were only ever activated when a ship expected imminent attack. Which also meant such a ship was about to use its own weapons.


    Glowing sensors and dancing lines on the displays to her left indicated that the Aegis Prime had come to the same conclusion and had fired their weapons less than two seconds after the DSF Volcano.


    The Qyrl ships disappeared in a glowing clouds of weapons hitting dust shields. Hollow nano particles, Zala remembered from the academy. They were called macrons, but dust was the more common term. Accelerated to considerable fractions of the speed of light. They were all so small that they would instantly vaporize when hit by a kinetic projectile. But they were moving so fast inside the cloud that the vaporized particle would almost instantly be replaced by another one moving into its space. Continuously. And while the dust in front of the projectile was constantly replenished, the projectile itself was eroded away by millions of tiny particles per second. Energy weapons had it even worse. Since the surface-area-to-mass ratio of the macrons was so extreme, they radiate heat away faster than receiving it. They stopped a laser or microwave beam dead in its tracks the way a pit of sand stops a runaway truck.


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    They were the ultimate defensive system.


    The DSF Volcano didn¡¯t have one.


    Dust shields were another technology that humans had not yet mastered. The theory was simple enough. But that was as good as explaining an Ancient Greek philosopher the principles of a modern combustion engine - even if he understood if, he would be unable to build one for lack of the right materials, the impossibility to manufacture it with the required precise tolerances, and the fact that running it requires the existence of the entire oil industry.


    So humans had weak imitations with a fraction of the defensive strength, or stolen alien shields that they could use for a couple encounters failing at the necessary maintenance and repair. No aliens sold dust shields to humans, so unlike hyperdrive cores, all of them were pirated tech. At least as far as Zala was aware.


    The weapons of Volcano and Aegis Prime hit their targets. A quickly expanding ball of superheated plasma around two of the ships was the result of the Volcano¡¯s macron guns. Unlike dust shields, dust guns were within human technology¡¯s reach. They would do some damage, Zala expected, but it took almost a minute to charge them up again. A small ship like the Volcano was full of compromises.


    Two other Qyrl ships were hit by iridescent plasma beams. These left gaps in their dust shields like the gaps between the rings of Saturn.


    ?Yes!¡°, Khon exclaimed excitedly, ?Disruptors! I¡¯ve heard about them. Quantum tunneling weapons. Take that, dust shield!¡°


    The sensors that could penetrate the dust shields showed extensive damage to the two Qyrl ships hit like that. And minor damage to the two targets the Volcano had fired upon.


    Only a few seconds had passed.


    Then, pulsating beams of plasma moving at fifteen percent light speed erupted from the Qyrl ships, streaming like pearls on a string through space, timed with controlled holes in the dust shields so that they could pass through it. The Qyrl fired back. There was no evasion at short-distance space battles. What is a quarter million klicks to a plasma burst moving at 45,000 klicks per second? Even a small ship like the Volcano couldn¡¯t dodge a projectile in less than twenty or so seconds.


    The first burst tore through the engine section. The Volcano¡¯s shielding absorbed the first three or four plasma beads, the next twenty or so burned a hole straight through hull, engines and the opposite side of the hull, and the following ten or so just passed straight through the space where a part of the Volcano had been a second earlier.


    The second burst hit the underside of the ship at an angle. Most of it was deflected, but the remaining plasma beads still tore a hole in the fuselage. Zala realized that she had been wrong. The Qyrl had spotted her ship and had been ready to fire on it.


    A third burst burned through a back part of the hull. A cargo or crew section. There was no time to check the details. And there wouldn¡¯t be anyone in bed right now.


    Most of the weapons, however, had been aimed at the battleship on the other side of the Qyrl battle group. It was, Zala had to admit, the bigger threat.


    Her heart sank as she looked at the screen. The Aegis Prime was being bombarded by plasma beams of the same kind that had crippled the Volcano. Dozens of them. The electro-magnetic shielding managed to divert a few, but could only slow down straight hits. The battleship was using its macron guns as defenses, aiming them at the incoming fire to diffuse and weaken it. But they were no match for the sheer amount of incoming.


    ?Fire at will!¡°, Zala barked a repetition of her order, ?everything we¡¯ve got. Focus fire on the first target left.¡°


    They had lost one engine, but their offensive arsenal was unchanged. While the macron guns recharged, the patrol boats secondary weapon systems opened fire, but they were easily swept away by their target¡¯s dust shield. Zala realized she had made a tactical error.


    ?Target switch!¡°, she bellowed, ?Attack the ships hit by disruptor beams!¡°


    The gaps in the dust shields. They could exploit them to get their weapons fire into the target.


    The displays showed several hits on one of the Qyrl ships. Then in a flash, it disappeared.


    At the same time, flashing red lights on the combat display showed more incoming fire. Captain Zala hit the big blue button on the command station and the DSF Volcano was violently forced into hyperspace, with a random heading.  Same as the Qyrl ship they had damaged. Emergency warp technology was the first thing humans re-engineered 21 years ago after the Qyrl war. Essentially the opposite of dimensional shears, it forced a ship into hyperspace instead of out of it. Together with their dust shields, it was this technology that brought about humanity¡¯s crushing defeat, because 80% or so of Qyrl ships would just jump away when faced with destruction, and at least half of them would be repaired and returned to service. Most human ships, on the other hand, were lost when defeated.


    The Volcano would stay in hyperspace only for a few minutes, time enough to get a solid distance. Then they would figure out the damage and probably send out a distress call - emergency warp had a nasty tendency to blow up the hyper core. It really was reserved for emergencies.

 The Enemy Within

    A bright flash indicated the spot where the patrol boat had been. The 3D holographic display projected into the center of the control room, between the three desks, marked the spot with a grey sphere for reference. Another one marked the Qyrl ship that had likewise fled into hyperspace. Weapons fire between the remaining six ships and the human battleship lit up the display.


    Nico was fiddling with the controls while talking: ?Bloom has no offensive weaponry. Nothing in the docking bay has anything worth mentioning. You may call us pirates, but we¡¯re more like pickpockets.¡°


    The other side was eerily calm and organized. No blaring alarms, static or people being tossed about. That was all SciFi movie nonsense. Plus microphones were good enough to pick up only what his conversation partner was saying, and filter out any background noise.


    ?If they attack us, they might attack you.¡°, the person on the other end of the line said. Nico hadn¡¯t had time to ask for rank and name.


    ?Yes, they might.¡°, he answered, ?But there¡¯s nothing I can do about that. This is a space station, not a fortress.¡°


    Two more Qyrl ships flashed out, their emergency warps taking them out of the battle before suffering catastrophic damage. The Aegis Prime was a battleship, and a formidable one. Still, the display also showed it taking a lot of hits.


    ?Well, better get re -¡°, the connection went dead. Nico looked up to the holographic display. Another grey sphere had appeared. He exhaled. The battleship had made an escape.


    There were four more Qyrl ships remaining. No ships had been destroyed in the short battle, a common result between opponents where both sides had emergency warp capabilities. The pirate outpost had no military sensors or AI, so all he had was guesswork on how much damage the two human ships had sustained, and by his guesses, they would both need months of repairs.


    ?I don¡¯t think we¡¯ll be able to send out rescue teams.¡°, he mumbled to himself, looking at the four bright dots on the display. The Qyrl ships would need a minute or two to shut down their dust shields and collect the macrons. Then he would find out why they had come.


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    ?Bad time?¡°, a deep voice from the door asked. Micah was standing there, just having opened the door. There were no formalities on Bloom and among the hundred or so people running the station, from Nico as the governor down to guards, engineers, supply and logistics clerks and all the rest, there had always been an open-door-and-no-secrets policy.


    ?Not worse than any other recently.¡°, Nico said, turning to Micah.


    ?Right¡°, the engineers said, stepping into the room, ?I think I¡¯ve found something. About that smuggler nest and other stuff.¡°


    While talking, he walked over to Nico and put a map of Binary Bloom on the table, with some scribbling added in green.


    ?Bloom fills only about half of this old ruin.¡°, he explained, pointing to the lines and rectangles he had added, ?And we add new sections now and then. The rest of this alien husk we explored just enough to make sure there¡¯s no radiation leaks or something about to explode, and that was years and years ago, right?¡°


    Nico slowly nodded. He had an idea where Micah was going with this, but he let him talk.


    ?Over the years, I¡¯ve noticed occasional energy spikes and weird sensor readings, but hey, Bloom is cobbled together so as long as everything worked fine, I ignored them.¡°


    He grabbed a chair from the next desk and sat down next to Nico, his fingers tracing over the lines he had drawn on the map.


    ?This is a rough estimate, from memory. But everything directional in those oddities points at roughly the same area. I think we didn¡¯t find the smuggler¡¯s nest. Just their drop-off point where they bring things into the station.¡°


    Nico was still nodding. He looked over the map and tried to find the location of the ventilation shaft and the room they had discovered. There. Indeed, it was close to that side of the unexplored parts of the station.


    ?All they need is a small landing craft.¡°, he said, ?To ferry things over. A 4D crane to lift them through the walls. Easy. But why?¡°


    ?And why shoot at me?¡°, Micah added, ?We don¡¯t do that kind of stuff to each other here. Trick maybe, a fistfight or so, ok. But shoot to kill?¡°


    Nico was lost in thoughts for a moment, then he said: ?A mystery worth solving. How long until we have internal communications back?¡°


    ?Ricky said a few minutes when I turned back.¡°


    ?Right¡°, Nico gave a slow nod, ?Quicker to wait for that than to run after the others. I¡¯ll contact them as soon as it¡¯s up to look for more clues. And I guess we¡¯ll send a team to check around this area¡°, he pointed to the map where Micah had drawn a few squares to indicate potential locations, ?to see what we¡¯ll find there.¡°

 Ground

    The Grimalkin descended on a pillar of fire, dropping towards the ground. The altitude indicator ticked down. 25 klicks. 24. 23.


    ?Hey, captain?¡°, Twitch suddenly said.


    Red looked up from her console and turned slightly towards her pilot: ?Yes?¡°


    ?Isn¡¯t that a Felindar ship down there? Closed spaceport section.¡°


    ?Hm¡°, Red said and zoomed in. ?It is.¡°


    They sat in silence while the ship dropped down further into the atmosphere. 19. 18.


    ?Well captain¡°, Grubs remarked with a slightly sarcastic tone of voice while turning his head to the side: ?You wanted the lion¡¯s den. Doesn¡¯t get more under everyone¡¯s nose, does it?¡°


    Red grimaced, her lips a narrow line. Grubs was right. This was much closer to everything than she had hoped for. She looked to the right of her screen where the altimeter was continuing to tick down, slowing slightly as the ship was breaking. 14.


    ?Too late to change our mind without being mighty suspicious.¡°, she said.


    Twitch nodded and returned his attention to the descend path. Tower control had sent over the data as they entered the thermosphere. He didn¡¯t actually have much to do, with landing approaches fully automated on all major spaceports for safety reasons. He was monitoring the ship and tower AIs coordinating a pre-planned approach plan and conducting minor corrections caused by atmospheric conditions and winds. His only job was to be ready for any highly unusual events where manual control overrides may be necessary.


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    Their altitude had dropped to 10 klicks. They dropped through a thin layer of clouds. Erulas was almost completely terraformed. It had already been almost earth-like when humans first discovered it, and turning it into an almost copy of humanity¡¯s original home was a relatively quick process, taking only 40 years. The planet was now in a period where only minor adjustments were being made to stabilize its new atmosphere, fauna and flora.


    The city had come into view as the curvature of the planet slowly became almost imperceptible. 8 klicks up, then 7.


    ?But what if it really was Yezz?¡°, Grubs asked out of nowhere.


    Red shook her head: ?A pretty good fake, but I¡¯ve known Yezz for more than a decade. That answer wasn¡¯t from her. Not even from her with a gun to her head.¡°


    Grubs grimaced: ?Damn aliens.¡°


    Red slowly nodded and sighed. ?We always knew.¡°, she said, ?That they can decrypt our communications. But I wouldn¡¯t have guessed they have intercept stations somewhere near Bloom. We¡¯re just a bunch of pirates.¡°


    ?Stations?¡°, Grubs asked, ?Plural?¡°


    ?Needs to be near the transmission path.¡°, Twitch explained without looking up from his console, ?So if you want to be sure you need a couple, depending how close you can get them.¡°


    The altimeter had dropped to 4 klicks. The city had become a discernible mass of streets and buildings. Soon after, the monorail system stood out from the streets underneath. Wide sidewalks and narrow roadways showed the modern architecture built for few private cars and a combination of monorail trains and robot taxis to move people around.


    Twenty minutes later, they were through customs and into the spaceport terminal.


    ?You sure the birds can¡¯t just scan our ship?¡°, Grubs whispered to Red as they walked into the public part of the terminal.


    ?First they¡¯d need to suspect the ship enough to make a scan. And secondly, they are higher-dimensional than us humans, but no high-dims. Unless it¡¯s a science ship they won¡¯t have 7D scanners. It would have to be a really convenient set of circumstances for them.¡°


    ?Your call.¡°, Grubs said, not very convinced. ?What now?¡°


    ?Now we¡¯ll head over to the portmaster and check the Grimalkin in for some cheap maintenance that¡¯ll take at least a few days. And then we¡¯ll think about contacting Yezz in a way that makes sure it¡¯s really her. Not sure yet how, we¡¯ll have to figure something out.¡°

 Trade

    Not far from the spaceport, President Vance and her ministers and advisors were discussing the offer the Felindar delegation had made. She had kept only the senior members of her staff in the room. The busy spaceport in the background, they had retreated to a diplomatic conference room that had been made as secure against eavesdropping as human technology could manage.


    ?They snuck it in as number eleven of twenty, but it¡¯s clear they are here for that hyper core that everyone is after. It¡¯s not even very subtle, just barely enough for plausible deniability.¡°, Minister Gordon said.


    ?Of course.¡°, Amara Vance stated plainly, taking a sip from her cup of tea, ?They want us to know what this deal is actually about without either side having to say it. And leaving us a way to let them know we don¡¯t have it by allowing us to say about a number of items that unfortunately we can¡¯t find this one and that one.¡°


    ?Which is what we¡¯ll have to do, given that we actually do not have the core.¡°, Gordon said.


    Amara put down the tea cup and leaned back in her chair. Her eyes quickly scanned the people in the room. Aside from her, it was only the four ministers, Sibastyan Mosely having joined them.


    ?Everything points to the pirate outpost Binary Bloom being the place to look for it.¡°, she informed them, ?And I had a chat with their leader yesterday. I gave him 50 hours to find it.¡°


    ?About that¡°, Sibastyan added, ?While you were talking to the aliens, I received an update from our battleship there. Seems the pirates have had a complete power failure. That might affect the timeline.¡°


    Gordon sat up straight: ?We only have about¡­ 16 hours anyway. Let¡¯s all get to business and pull all the strings we have? I will have my people look over all the trade markets and auctions. Maybe we can identify potential buyers.¡°


    ?Not much time.¡°, Amara mused, ?Sibastyan, I¡¯ll come with you. We need more pressure on the pirates. We have marines and a battleship in place, why aren¡¯t they simply coughing it up?¡°


    They stood up.


    Alhan spoke up: ?For the sake of appearances, I¡¯ll have my staff look over the other items on the list so we can have an answer on those as well.¡°


    They went their separate ways with Amara and Sibastyan walking over to the elevator to get to the small military command post located within the terminal building. Outside, the city and the spaceport were as busy as always.


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    A short ride up and a short walk took them to the command post. Sibastyan¡¯s tablet beeped an urgent notification just outside and he gave it a quick look, then walked the final few steps a bit faster. ?Emergency signal¡°, he said simply to his president.


    They rushed through the door into the control room. A large holographic display in the center, about three meters in diameter, was currently idle. Around it, the square room was filled with desks and computer stations. Seven staff members were busily on duty, analyzing, correlating, prioritizing incoming reports and events. Most of it was routine, much of it was already pre-classified by AI systems. Some of it was important. Like the near real-time feed from the Aegis Prime that was mostly data and some audio.


    After a few seconds, the holographic display started to fill with markers. The Aegis Prime, the pirate outpost labeled ?Binary Bloom¡°, another human ship labeled ?DSF Volcano (Dephyr)¡° and seven ships without labels. It would take a few more seconds for the computer to integrate the incoming data and mark them as Qyrl ships.


    Amara was speechless. Sibastyan regained his composure faster and hurried over to the main command station to get a more complete picture. He had received the Aegis Prime¡¯s first burst message verbatim: ¡°seven Qyrl warships, engagement immanent¡°. Therefore, he was more prepared for the situation they found, while it took Amara an uncharacteristically long time to digest all the information and understand the situation.


    By the time she reached the main console, the battle had already begun. ?No¡°, she corrected herself in her thoughts, ?Not the battle. The war.¡°


    ?Are we positive they are Qyrl ships?¡°, she asked one of the operators.


    ?Over 90% confidence.¡°, the man answered, ?Build, weaponry, sizes all point to medium-sized Qyrl warships.¡°


    Sibastyan had also heard it. He turned to another operator: ?Alert for all ships in space. All ships on the ground to readiness.¡°


    The operator acknowledged and her fingers went flying over the keyboard, executing the command. There was a hum of voices in the room. Hurried and busy, but structured. The command post had trained dozens of possible situations again and again.


    ?Sir¡°, another operator spoke up, addressing Sibastyan who was at the moment in command. Erulas¡¯ government system had distributed responsibilities. The president was the head of government, but military authority rested on the shoulders of the minister of defense. He turned. ?Data indicates the power outage on the pirate outpost was caused by a strong EMP. Likely the station is the Qyrl¡¯s target, not our battleship.¡°


    Sibastyan thought for one second before asking back: ?Are we in contact with our marines?¡°


    ?Yes, sir.¡°, was the answer, ?They retreated to the transport and we have a communication link with it.¡°


    ?Order them ready to repel boarders.¡°


    ?Aye, sir.¡°


    Unable to influence the battle, most people were now watching it unfold. They saw a Qyrl ship and then the Dephyr scout blink out. Then two more Qyrl ships. Then the display froze, showing the final situation they had received.


    ?Aegis Prime made an emergency warp.¡°, a voice from the incoming data link said into the quiet room. A counter showed 2:51. The second most powerful battleship in the Erulas space force had been forced to retreat in less than three minutes.


    Amara pulled out her personal tablet and unfolded it slowly. Then she spoke into it: ?Arrange a meeting with the Felindar diplomat. Just him and me. I need to buy some information.¡°

 Code

    ?You are positive it was Yezzania Senglu?¡°, Elias asked the guard. They were huddled into a small dead-end corridor between the market and the warehouse section. It was used as a charging station for a forklift which was currently occupied elsewhere, cleaning up debris probably.


    ?Positive.¡°, the guard whose name tag identified him as ?Roger Anthon¡° stated.


    ?Damn¡°, Elias lowered his head. He slowly pulled a smartstick out of one of the many small pockets on his vest, cool to the touch of his fingers. More mumbling to himself, he summed up: ?Yezz and two guards murdered. A hidden stash of some kind. And alien space ships pushing out the battleship.¡°, he looked up as he handed over the stick that contained a fair amount of untraceable cryptocurrency: ?Not much details, but very fresh information. Thank you.¡°


    Roger checked left and right and went back to his official duties. He vanished into the background noise of the station putting itself together again. Elias remained for a few moments, thinking about the implications of the intel he had just received. He considered it in light of the bigger picture, or at least the parts he knew about that. As an operative he was well aware of the fact that he had at best limited information.


    He came to a conclusion and started walking back towards his quarters. ?If it walks and quacks like a duck¡­¡°, he told himself, ?This is an intelligence operation. Elimination of select targets. Stashed equipment in an anonymous location that can¡¯t be linked to a particular person if discovered. And calling in the cavalry when the objective is secured.¡°


    He hurried, his heart beating faster. All three Junkstorm planets had their pieces on the board already. Erulas and Dephyr had sent ships, and his own planet had, well, him. Not exactly the equivalent of a detachment of marines or a battleship, but he had years of head start. ?Not that it matters.¡°, he mumbled. Because all this pointed to the intelligence operation being run by aliens.


    He was almost running now. He forced himself to slow down. A fast walk fit right in, but running would turn heads.


    Minutes later, he arrived back at his home on the station. He locked the door and pulled away the fake wall hiding his comm unit. Its faster-than-light communication meant it was a device reaching into the higher dimensions.


    ?Pretty much all aliens out there are higher dimensional beings.¡°, he mused while turning the unit on and reconfiguring it, ?Which means they and their equipment should cause small interferences. Ah, there.¡°, he switched off the error correction and auto-adjustments. All kinds of things in space caused interferences, so smoothing them over was a standard function. But if he disabled it and ran a scan for nearby signals, they might show up.


    He cursed as his fingers were flying over the keyboard. This was not his area of expertise. He had to consult the built-in manual multiple times. ?Lucky me.¡°, he thought. If the manual had been on a tablet it would be gone.


    A faint, continuous buzz emerged from the comm unit as it ran the scan. Interpreting the results required several more looks into the manual. In the end, Elias had a rough picture of the 4D space nearby. It was a lot more crowded than he had imagined.


    ?Of course!¡°, he exclaimed, ?The old alien station is at least 4D.¡°


    The primitive scanning didn¡¯t allow for even higher dimensions, so he couldn¡¯t determine the exact extent. But in any case, his main concern were a number of dots. He had drawn up a sketch on a piece of paper from the readings. It wasn¡¯t exactly a map, but the closest thing to one that he could get with his equipment. The dots had been standing out in the reading: ?These four large ones are moving, must be the alien ships. But these small ones are inside Bloom.¡°


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    He went over the numbers on the screen again, some of them polar coordinates and some of them signal attenuations. It dawned on him: ?Oh shit. The flatland model. In 4D they can walk over the station unseen and unhindered the way we could walk over a 1:1 paper map.¡°


    He initiated another scan to get the changes in position. It confirmed that the small dots were slowly moving around. His manual coordinate transformation was more of an estimate and his map of the station was a quick sketch, so he couldn¡¯t confirm exact locations or whether they had indeed walked through something that should be a solid wall.


    He also noticed something to the side, just outside Bloom, that was too weak to be a higher dimensional structure but still caused a small interference. He knew that pattern, but couldn¡¯t say for sure from where. He tried to recall it. Not from his own experience. From training? No, further back. University! Yes. It came back. He gave his brain time to retrieve the almost forgotten memory fragments. He gave a brief smile remembering his electrical engineering professor. He was thankful for all the anecdotes that dragged out the lectures, realizing only now that they served not just an entertainment purpose but also made them more memorable. He could recall just enough to put the pieces together.


    ?I¡¯ll be damned.¡°, his face had become a mixture of surprise and fascination, ?That¡¯s a listening post. So close that one antenna array will do. The audacity! They¡¯ve been intercepting all of Bloom¡¯s communication for who knows how long. Oh. And probably mine.¡°


    He pondered the implications for a minute, wandering up and down in his office room. His discovery put the importance of Binary Bloom into a new perspective. All known alien races avoided the Junkstorm. Setting up a listening post here, even with Bloom being near the edge of it, showed some serious dedication. He also considered his options. He was just a human, a 3D creature.


    ?The model is only an approximation.¡°, he mumbled, ?It is not precise. There is always an overlap. A 3D residual. I can work with that.¡°


    Then he had formed a plan of action. He quickly typed several sentences into the comm unit. He encrypted the message, because even if the aliens could break the encryption he still didn¡¯t want to give himself away to human interceptors. The message was in code. Encryption was technical and could be solved by sufficiently powerful computers. But code, code was different. If you had agreed with your communications partner beforehand that ?a red moon rises¡° was your shared code for ?I will arrive tonight¡°, no amount of computing power could unravel that. The disadvantage was, of course, that you could only send messages you can explain with the limited vocabulary of your code. His message contained the Dangorod intelligence code for ?I have been compromised¡° and the code for ?aliens detected¡°. He had no code that would allow him to be more precise than that. The final sentence of his message meant ?I am taking action¡°. Again, impossible to explain in code what exactly he planned to do.


    He prepared a short burst transmission of the message. With some luck, it could evade interception. If they had been recording carefully, any simple AI would notice that the coded message had a different style and rhythm to his usual reports. They would know that something was up, even if not what.


    Then he set up a second transmission, unencrypted, no code. He added a time delay of one hour. In case something happened to him, the pirates needed to know what was going on right among them.


    Yanking the plasma rifle from the hidden compartment next to the comm unit, Elias felt its familiar weight in his hands. A glance revealed the glowing blue charge indicator, confirming that it was still functional. Agent Thorne left his quarters to confront an unknown alien enemy. He understood the risk and for a moment thought of the marines as reinforcements. But no, brutes would endanger him more than help. He wanted to scout out the listening post and confirm his suspicion, nothing more. The delayed broadcast was his backup plan, no time for more.

 Outpost

    Valarie was happy to be called away from the scene. She could describe the location of the third body, she didn¡¯t want to see it again. She had known the man.


    She hurried along the empty hallway, the chief technician walking briskly beside her. ?There¡¯s an airlock with a few suits down here.¡°, Baer said, ?Intended for maintenance. Rarely used. Better double-check the oxygen tanks.¡°


    Valarie nodded and walked faster. Baer was a head taller than her and his steps were longer. She had to almost run to keep pace, but Nico had stressed the ?urgent¡° part of his request. She gave her pistol a quick check while walking. Baer noticed it: ?You think we¡¯ll need that?¡° he asked, worried.


    ?I hope not. But in case we do, it¡¯s better working.¡°, she answered. In her three years as a guard she had never had to use it. She had to draw it twice, but never fired it outside target practice.


    Just like everyone else on Bloom, they had no idea what had just happened outside the station. Once they were in the suits they might have radio contact again, if the electronics had survived the EMP.


    These parts of the station were almost deserted. They consisted of halls carved out of the alien husk, most of them used as warehouses or small factories. There was a little bit of industry on Bloom, mostly 3D printing and assembly. It gave the station some more independence if not every small item or spare part needed to be imported. Needless to say, most of the spare parts made here were not licensed from the original manufacturer.


    ?What¡¯s your story?¡°, Baer asked. It took Valarie a few seconds to realize that this was his way to start a bit of small talk. She considered her answer for a second, then tried to be concise given that Baer appeared to prefer that: ?I¡¯ve always admired police and the like. Keeping society running smoothly, making sure everyone is safe, that kind of stuff. But back on Dangorod everything is too strictly organized. It¡¯s more about enforcing the rules than helping people. Besides, you have to study for two years, followed by two years of being a trainee.¡°


    They were getting close to their destination now. Valarie concluded her short recap: ?Not my thing. I¡¯ve got a light case of ADHD, mostly short attention span and not being good at organizing my day. In school I was good, I had my timetable and one hour of a topic I can do. In university you need to manage yourself. And lectures can be two or even three hours. Just the thought of that scared me. On Bloom, a girl can become a guard just by showing up and convincing Nico that she¡¯ll be a good choice. Which is basically what I did.¡°


    Baer had a slightly worried look on his face that he quickly forced away. He glanced sideways at the pistol in her holster: ?You good with that?¡°


    Valarie nodded. ?If we need it, you can count on me.¡°


    ?Good¡°, Baer grumbled, then fell silent again.


    After a minute or so they reached the airlock. An afterthought crammed into an unused space between two warehouses, almost at the end of Bloom. Beyond the end of the hallway which they could already see, there was open space to one side and unexplored alien space station ruin to the other. Given enough time, Bloom would eventually expand into it, as it had done for a few decades.


    They got into the airlock and into the suits, picking two which had full oxygen tanks. Baer made a quick node to replace one suit which obviously had a leak in the system, its tank was half empty. Valarie attached her weapon to the suit¡¯s tool belt and adjusted the grip so she could hold and fire it with gloves on. Then they both got into the suits. They were quick-access suits, so getting in meant opening it with zippers from top to bottom, including both legs, stepping in and letting the suit mechanics close the zippers back up and seal them.


    ?Test, 1, 2, 3¡°, Valarie heard in her helmet. She acknowledged. The radios had survived. Whether it was because of the thin shielding it had, or because the airlock was an enclosed space within the station, or because it was far enough away was a question for another time.


    Baer pressed a button and contacted Nico: ?Nico, ready for spacewalk. Do you copy?¡°


    A few seconds later, Nicodemus acknowledged and sent coordinates to their suits: ?This is an approximate location. Look around in that area. Be careful. We have hostile ships inbound and our smugglers already shot at Micah.¡°


    Valarie froze, her eyes wide open. Baer jerked up: ?Come again?¡°


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    ?They shot at¡­¡° - ?I know. The part about ships.¡°


    Nicodemus could almost be heard through the radio collecting his thoughts. Then he said: ?Unknown ships near the station had a short battle with the Erulas battleship. I don¡¯t know who they are or what they want. Must assume they aren¡¯t friendly.¡°


    ?You¡¯re not saying.¡°, Baer mumbled, ?Right, we better get this done.¡°


    He moved forward and gestured Valarie to follow. It took her a while to get moving, and when she did, she asked the older engineer: ?Shouldn¡¯t we get back inside? Who knows what will happen next?¡°


    ?Nah.¡°, Baer said, ?If the shit hits the fan, we¡¯re no worse off here. Maybe better, even.¡°


    They pushed off and drifted over a gap in the superstructure towards the section that Binary Bloom had not yet expanded into. Seconds passed in silence. Neither of them said anything and being in the vacuum of space meant no other sounds reached them. The distance was less than fifty meters, but it seemed like an eternity to Valarie. She had been on a few spacewalks before, but never freely drifting. Her rational mind told her that the suits had small thrusters and she didn¡¯t need a tether, but she felt insecure and overwhelmed nonetheless.


    They reached their destination in less than ten seconds, objectively. Valarie would¡¯ve sworn it was at least half a minute. Space had that effect on humans. Without references, the perception of distances and time became messed up.


    They hit the wall they had been aiming for at some speed, despite using the suit thrusters to decelerate. A clanking noise echoed through the suits as they activated the magnets in their boots and the wall became a floor as they turned. There was a jagged hole not far from where they had landed, most likely the result of an impact of some kind long before Bloom was founded. They had never figured out what had happened to the original alien station. It had already been abandoned and drifted through space, possible for decades, when humans first found it.


    They carefully moved through the hole, avoiding the sharp edges as best as they could. The suits were sturdy and wouldn¡¯t cut open easily, but better safe than sorry. Once inside, Baer radioed Nicodemus: ?We¡¯re inside. I¡¯ll keep y¡­¡° a loud screech interrupted him as the connection went dead. The status light in the helmet¡¯s heads-up-display went red. No connection.


    Valarie saw him turning around and moving his mouth, but heard nothing. She, too, had that short burst of static in her ears as the connection switched off. The metal-on-metal sounds of her boots were the only sound in her universe right now.


    Baer gestured her to stay put and pulled out a cable from its place in his suit. He stepped forward and pushed it into the same place in Valarie¡¯s suit. ?Right¡°, he said, ?Looks like we¡¯re back to 20th century tech for now. Good the suits still have the wires for cases like this. You ok?¡°


    Valarie nodded.


    ?Great. Let¡¯s go. Stay close. That cable is only five meters.¡°


    For the second time during their short journey, Valarie wanted to turn back. To the safety of the station. She shook off the feeling. Bloom was not actually more secure. Baer was right. They had a job to do.


    On a map, they had to cover only a hundred meters. Inside the corridors, rooms and whatever else everything was, the actual distance they had to walk was at least twice that. It took them about three minutes and seemed much, much longer than that. The inside of the alien husk was utterly dark except where their lights illuminated bare metal, alien plastic and fragments of other materials that Valarie couldn¡¯t identify. No atmosphere meant no light scattering. They moved wherever they could, their boots allowing them to switch from floor to wall to ceiling as necessary. Outside the gravity field of the station, orientation was strictly relative. After six or seven changes, Valarie would not have been able to tell which way her current ?up¡° was relative to the upwards direction on Binary Bloom.


    ?We should be in the right area.¡°, Baer finally remarked after they had crossed a large hall whose roof was missing. Or maybe it was the floor. Baer pulled a measurement device Valarie hadn¡¯t seen before out of the bag he had slung over his shoulder and adjusted various dials, holding it this way and that.


    ?Something¡¯s here.¡°, he said after a while, ?But it¡¯s hard to¡­ wait¡­ maybe¡­ yes. I think I¡¯ve got it. This way.¡° And he pointed towards their right. His light fell upon a small airlock. Barely taller than Valarie, he would have to duck to get through it.


    They glanced at each other, then shrugged and pressed the one large button besides the airlock, clearly meant to be operated while in a suit. The door opened and indeed revealed an airlock, slightly larger than the door and deep enough for three or four people to cram inside. They did that, finding and pressing another button on the inside. The airlock closed and their suits showed pressure returning.


    It also showed no oxygen. Baer fiddled with the controls, while Valarie stood nearby, feeling useless. She didn¡¯t know these suits well enough. She watched the pressure increase and the indicator for breathability remaining at the zero mark.


    Valarie could hear something in her helmet speakers but couldn¡¯t make out any words. She looked at Baer but he didn¡¯t seem to notice her, staring at his heads-up display. She nudged him and asked: ?What?¡°


    She heard him through the speakers again, more clearly this time: ?I said it can¡¯t be. Let me check.¡°


    Endless seconds later, he said with a breaking voice: ?Nitrogen, carbon dioxide, Hydrogen sulfide. Keep your helmet on, this is toxic.¡°, and then he added: ?To humans.¡°


    The pressure gauge now showed about 40% of standard atmospheric pressure. It stopped there.


    Baer finished: ?I remember this from basic training. Back when the war was going badly and we got ready for invasion and all-out defense. Never saw the war, but I got basic training.¡°


    Valarie understood what he was implying. He said it: ?The hydrogen sulfide gives it away. We¡¯ve got a Qyrl base hidden right next to Bloom. Explains the small door. They¡¯re shorter than humans.¡°

 Calidor

    ?This is the DSF Volcano. Emergency, emergency, emergency. All nearby vessels. Urgent evacuation required. Crew: 20. Life support: 34 hours.¡°


    Corporal Khon leaned back in his chair and slowly turned his head towards Captain Zala: ?Emergency call set up. Repeats every minute.¡°


    She acknowledged with a nod. Behind her through the mess hall crewmen were retreating to their quarters. She had ordered everyone to rest, to sleep if possible, to reduce oxygen consumption. The emergency warp had blown out both hyperdrives and the hits they had taken from the Qyrl had done the rest. Their sub-light engine was crippled, half of the crew had lost their quarters and had to set up improvised beds in the mess, corridors and other rooms. The main reactor was intact, but the regeneration systems were badly damaged. CO2 scrubbers would keep the atmosphere breathable for days, but oxygen generation was close to nothing.


    ?How far out are we?¡°, Zala asked. She knew the coordinates were transmitted in the emergency call on a data channel.


    ?About fifty light-hours from Noctua 7469. If we had a powerful enough optical telescope we could make a recording of our own battle the day after tomorrow.¡°, Khon joked.


    ?Can they reach us in time from Dephyr?¡°


    Khon ran a quick calculation just to confirm what he already knew.


    ?Negative.¡°, he said slowly, ?We¡¯re seven-point-seven lightyears away. No ship in the fleet can get here in under three days.¡°


    ?Dangorod is even further.¡°, Zala added. She knew the cosmography of the Junkstorm. ?What about Erulas?¡°


    Khon had already done the math: ?A bit closer than home, but still almost six lightyears. If they have a fast enough ship they could reach us in just over two days. Fifty-odd hours if we assume their fastest ships are about equal to ours.¡°


    ?No difference to us if we¡¯re sixteen hours dead or forty.¡°, Zala responded with a hint of sarcasm in her voice. ?So it¡¯s really on some ship that¡¯s in transit somewhere out here.¡°


    Khon nodded. It really was down to that. Or to the pirates, he thought, but they would have to deal with the Qyrl first. They had scanned Binary Bloom and there was some evidence that the outpost did have some weaponry. Which may or may not still function after the EMP.


    A thought crosses Khon¡¯s mind. What if the purpose of the EMP had been precisely to disable the outpost¡¯s defenses? A space station had much fewer restrictions on the types and energy requirements of weapons and could power beam weapons much stronger than what even a battleship could carry. It¡¯s all a matter of size. The Aegis Prime had three- or four-hundred crew. But a major space station had thousands of inhabitants, and often some energy intensive industry. Binary Bloom had the size for two large fusion reactors.


    Stolen novel; please report.Their scans didn¡¯t reveal details, but with that kind of power available, Binary Bloom just might have a quantum coherence cannon.


    About sixty light-hours away, the Aegis Prime had been more lucky. Their emergency jump had taken them slightly deeper into the Junkstorm, and they had gone away with more hits but all in all less damage. Mostly due to its considerably larger size allowing for more redundancy. The battleship was designed to take heavy damage and still remain able to shoot back.


    Commander Frason and General Norge were looking over the damage report. It was Frason¡¯s job to make the tactical decisions, but Norge could call in reinforcements or order an immediate counter-attack.


    ?Life support is operational, half of our sub-light engines still work.¡°, Frason summed up what the display to his right was showing in status reports, ?But the hyperdrive will most likely blow up if we try to use it.¡°


    ?Weapons?¡°, Norge asked, ?We can¡¯t be sure they won¡¯t hunt us down to finish the job.¡°


    Frason looked over the detailed status: ?Most are functional. We lost one disruptor beam and a plasma cannon.¡°


    ?Comms¡°, the general barked, ?Give me HQ on a priority call.¡°


    He didn¡¯t wait for the ?Yes, sir¡°. Instead he turned back to Frason: ?We keep the ship on alert until we know the situation. I¡¯ll leave the rest to you.¡°


    Frason looked at the damage and status reports once more while the general walked over to the communications section. Then he started giving repair orders to the engineering crew. What systems to check first, which repairs to do now and which could wait. He needed to get as much of his ship back as possible. The hyperspace drive was the most important and he ordered his most senior engineers there. If it could be at least patched up to let them make one more jump, things would be a lot easier.


    To the side of the screen he had calculations similar to the ones Khon on the DSF Volcano had made. The numbers barely differed. Sixty light hours are less than one percent of a lightyear. Space is big. Really big.


    The numbers also told him that they were still within the Oort Cloud of the Noctua system. The chance to be hit by one of its objects was minimal. It was quite counterintuitive. There were probably one- or two-hundred billion comets in it. But still, due to its sheer size, the cloud was essentially empty space. The average distance between these objects was in the millions of kilometers.


    Frason turned back to the ship. Outer space bothered him. He preferred just passing through in hyperspace. One more reason to get the the hyperdrive working. The other was that outer space meant no protection from cosmic radiation by a star¡¯s heliosphere. A few hours should be fine, but if they had to wait for a rescue mission, several days would cause health issues with at least some crew members. The rule-of-thumb he remembered from the academy was about 1% of the crew per day.


    ?Commander, I have a suggestion.¡°, a voice came from the data scientist team. A young men named Aarix. ?Speak up.¡°, Frason answered, turning around.


    ?We are days away from Erulas. The other planets are even further. Except for Calidor.¡°


    Frason tilted his head skeptically: ?Calidor? The desert planet?¡°


    The young scientist nodded emphatically. ?That one. Terraforming will take another forty or fifty years, but there are already engineers and some early settlers. People who want to get a head start on land or just like the challenge. Probably a few ships as well.¡°


    Frason understood.


    ?It¡¯s closer than Erulas by about a light-year. They could reach us about half a day earlier.¡°


    ?Give it a try.¡°, Frason ordered, ?See if you can reach someone there.¡°

 Knowledge

    ?You traded half of their list for some information?¡°, Gordon was incredulous.


    ?And a promise that if we sell this hypercore to any aliens, they are first in line.¡°, Amara added, continuing to walk briskly towards the waiting shuttle.


    Gordon kept pace and looked at her sideways. There were clearly so many things he wanted to say, but didn¡¯t.


    ?Yes¡°, Amara answered, ?it was worth it. I need the secure conference room. Now.¡°


    Gordon shut up and with nothing but the echoes of their steps they both rushed towards the shuttle bay, immediately jumping into the waiting presidential transport. Only a few minutes later, they reached the skyscraper that was administration and government of Erulas. One benefit of being the president was getting traffic priority. All flying cars in the city ran on autopilot anyway, human drivers were allowed in ground vehicles only. Mostly for nostalgic reasons, the majority of people preferred the convenience of not having to drive themselves.


    Amara rushed straight to the secure conference room, where minister Krisi was already waiting, having arrived just moments before.


    Amara waited until the door was closed and sealed. All sounds from outside the room disappeared. Its sound proofing was near perfect. The room had no structural connection to the rest of the building, so vibrations did not transfer. It was hanging on four carbon nano ropes that were anchored on both sides on dampening springs. The amount of vibrations that made it across these only connections were statistically less than the Brownian motion in the material. It was also hanging in the center of the building, with no outside walls. It was a Faraday cage and had electromagnetic shielding. It even had an outer layer of very rare and expensive 5D material. In other words: It was the best that human technology could create with regards to making it next to impossible to eavesdrop.


    ?We are still waiting.¡°, she said, ?for the ambassadors from Dephyr and Dangorod. I asked them to come here post-haste, but we will use the time until they arrive.¡°


    With a gesture, she invited the men to sit down at the conference table. She grabbed a bottle of water and glasses from a sideboard and put them on the table before sitting down herself.


    ?I spoke with the Felindar¡°, she began, ?because as we know their traders get around a lot and pick up all information they can get. They are not just the traders of the galaxy, but also the information brokers. It was expensive¡°, she continued, to a small sigh by Gordon, ?but worth it.¡°


    She poured herself a glass of water and quickly took a sip before continuing: ?Good news is, that Qyrl attack near the pirate station isn¡¯t the beginning of a war. But there will be another war, in a few years. Now I need to point out that most of what I¡¯m saying is a mixture of hearsay and my own conclusions. We¡¯ll go into more details in a separate session.¡°


    Krisi spoke up: ?Why are we waiting for the ambassadors instead of using a secure conference call to their home planets?¡°


    Amara gave a slight nod while turning to him. Her hands gripping, then releasing, then gripping the glass again were the only outwards signs of her inner turmoil. ?I was about to get to that. Okay, I¡¯ll do that first. The Qyrl have infiltrated us. The Felindar don¡¯t know exactly how and when. But they know that there are Qyrl surveillance posts on all our planets, in some of our asteroid belts and¡°, she made a short pause to take a breath, ?on that pirate outpost, Binary Bloom. We all better remember that name, it¡¯ll come up a lot in the next days.¡°


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    The two ministers raised their eyebrows in unison during Amara¡¯s mentioning of a Qyrl infiltration.


    ?But¡°, Gordon wondered, ?the Junkstorm is hostile to the Qyrl. As far as we know they suffer within hours and take serious health damage within days.¡°


    Amara nodded, taking another sip of water, savoring the cold, refreshing liquid while she sorted her thoughts: ?And we thought that isolates us. And yes, while according to the Felindar the Qyrl have actively researched how to shield themselves from the Junkstorm - this is why the occasional unmanned probes we intercept are bio-organic ships rather than the meta-metal construction used in their larger ships. Sure they¡¯re scanning human space, but there are also experiments in Junkstorm shielding. But¡°, she raised her hand to stop Gordon from interrupting, as she saw him starting to form another question, ?they haven¡¯t made much progress in that area. The Junkstorm remains our best defense. Their infiltration is more subtle. There¡¯s a human faction working with them.¡°


    ?Come again?¡°, Gordon said, his eyes wide in disbelief.


    ?The Felindar have no details on who these people are or why they work with the Qyrl and I don¡¯t want to speculate. But they are positive that the listening posts are manned mostly by humans, with occasional Qyrl visitors.¡°


    ?If they have listening posts so close to us, they can intercept pretty much everything.¡°, Gordon concluded, ?But do they have the quantum computing advances to break our encryption?¡°, he questioned, ?Because for all I know, they don¡¯t.¡°


    Amara again agreed: ?This is how the Felindar know about the whole scheme. The Qyrl have been buying a nice chunk of that technology from more advanced aliens.¡°


    ?They are paying them in tech.¡°, Krisi suddenly interrupted. He had been silent so far.


    The other two looked at him inquisitively.


    ?Uh¡°, he said, ?that wasn¡¯t in response to your last, anyway. I¡¯ve been thinking how. Sure, cryptocurrency would be a possibility, but that¡¯s a closed system, we¡¯d know if aliens were involved. Intergalactic credits are pretty much cash and untraceable, but individuals who aren¡¯t exporters showing up with them would raise eyebrows. The pirate outposts are the only places where they could spend them easily, and they aren¡¯t known for luxurious lifestyle.¡°


    He looked around from Amara to Gordon and back: ?But if they pay them in alien technology, that¡¯s easy to sell and generally people don¡¯t ask where you got it from. We all pretend like we don¡¯t know that a lot of alien tech is stolen.¡°


    ?You¡¯re right.¡°, Amara answered, ?That completes the picture. It explains why Binary Bloom is important to them. The pirates built their station into an ancient alien orbital platform. As I understand, a large part of that old structure is still unused. Easy to put an entire base there. This is their local base of operations. They can send one large shipment of tech there once a year or so, then slowly trickle it into the pirate market where nobody asks any questions. It fits perfectly to what I¡¯ve learnt from the Felindar: That the Qyrl attack is on the surface an attempt to grab that hypercore, but they don¡¯t much care if they manage to or not. The real agenda is to destroy the listening post before it is discovered. Something happened on the station that they believe could blow their cover.¡°


    ?Where¡¯s Sibastyan?¡°, Gordon asked with an undertone of nervousness betraying his anxiety, ?He needs to order our marines off the station.¡°


    ?I left him in the command center. He¡¯s already understood that there¡¯s a risk the Qyrl will bombard the station. But if two ships suddenly leave, they are just as likely to draw fire. For the moment, the marines will stay inside their ships so if the station is breached they are fine. Besides,¡° she concluded, ?I don¡¯t think the Qyrl will destroy the outpost. It is too useful to them. They will make a show of an attack, miss a lot, hit some of the old alien structure ?by accident¡®, you know the parts their listening post is in, and then disappear, maybe making a show of retreating before our reinforcements.¡°


    ?So¡°, Krisi asked, ?What¡¯s our counter-plan?¡°

 Power

    ?My name is Nicodemus Hallows. I am the governor of the space station you are approaching.¡°, he said into the microphone in front of him, not certain if the aliens were listening, ?We are a civilian space port. Requesting parley.¡°


    Next to him, the young engineer Ricky was sitting at the controls of Binary Bloom¡¯s hidden weaponry. It wasn¡¯t much, more intended as deterrence. But if they could use the moment of surprise, they might be able to take out two, with a lot of luck three of the ships.


    ?I didn¡¯t know we have these.¡°, Ricky said while working the controls to get them ready to fire without sending out revealing energy spikes.


    ?Not many do.¡°, Nico said. With Baer away, he had to rope in Ricky to do the job. The boy was a talented engineer. More importantly, he was there.


    The alien ships answered by opening fire. Rows of of glowing beads hurled towards the outpost, each a superheated ball of plasma. Nicodemus hit the stereotypical red button that made alarms blare throughout the station and airlocks and shutters close in preparation for a hull breach. In about ten seconds, Binary Bloom would become a honeycomb of almost a hundred sections.


    The pulsating plasma beams were not aimed for the inhabited parts of the station. The station AI projected their calculated paths and points of impact.


    ?What the ¡­?¡°, Nicodemus exclaimed, and then: ?Oh the little fuckers! Ricky, fire, all weapons, now!¡°


    Ricky pushed several buttons in quick succession. Deep in the station, at the edge where Binary Bloom ended and the alien ruin began, sections of the hull blew off, shot into space by explosive bolts. Six smaller hatches were immediately followed by missiles, each three meters long and carrying a gamma-ray nuclear warhead.


    Three of them were vaporized almost instantly, because several plasma beams were targeting this exact location. Only two missiles had enough time to fire their sideway thrusters for evasive maneuvers.


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    Other beams shot a large breach into the hangar bay doors. Another stream destroyed the large UV laser cannon. Not that it made a difference, it as well as the smaller lasers were still broken from the EMP. Several streams missed the station or hit the alien structure where no parts of Binary Bloom had been built, yet.


    ?Launch bays one through six are all gone.¡°, Ricky reported the status, ?Laser cannon is out, too.¡°


    Bloom had only a last surprise still up its sleeve. A large piece of machinery that to a casual observer looked like a particle accelerator. Which wasn¡¯t entirely wrong.


    ?Quantum coherence cannon ready in five seconds.¡°, Ricky said.


    The aliens had stopped shooting. They had fired only one burst. Small landing crafts now detached from their ships. Two each, eight in total. They fired their engines and approached Binary Bloom at high speed.


    ?Hold it.¡°, Nicodemus said.


    ?What do you want?¡°, he said into the microphone that transmitted his words into space. Then he switched to internal communications and connected to the two ships the marines had come in.


    Suddenly, the intergalactic diplomatic channel flickered to life with a broadcast: ?This is Amara Vance, president of Erulas. Unidentified alien vessels in system Noctua 7469, galactic coordinates in the data stream to this broadcast. I know what you are looking for. The core is in my possession and I have had it moved to a secure location. Your soldiers died for nothing. Reinforcements are already on their way. If they encounter you within human space, you will be destroyed without further warnings.¡°


    ?That¡¯s a cute bluff.¡°, Ricky remarked after the broadcast had finished.


    ?Yeah.¡°, Nicodemus answered, ?Even at max speed, they¡¯re more than two days away from here. The question is: Do the Qyrl know that?¡°


    Ricky looked at him as if he had just said that water isn¡¯t wet. ?It¡¯s pretty obvious, Nico. Unless there was a fleet stationed in interstellar space, Erulas is the closest planet.¡°


    ?Calidor is even closer. A few fast attack ships could make the trip in thirty hours or so. The Qyrl may not know that it¡¯s not yet inhabited.¡° Then he turned to the comm unit again. After a short exchange he summed up: ?I¡¯ve informed the marines of the situation. That general on the battleship had already ordered them to repel boarders. I have no idea how long they could hold the hangar if it came to that. Qyrl aren¡¯t exactly the best ground troops in the galaxy.¡°


    ?Uh, Nico¡°, Ricky was pointing at the holographic display that showed the station and its immediate surroundings, ?I don¡¯t think they plan to come through the hangar.¡°, his finger was directed at the projected courses of the landing crafts, and none of them was flying towards the docking area.

 Rescue

    ?Micah!¡°


    The single lamp illuminated broken metal and gaping holes, a chaotic mess of sharp corners and the hot reddish glow of metal heated to hundreds of degrees. The suit was protecting her from the heat radiating away from it, as long as she didn¡¯t get within touching distance. She knew that in the vacuum of space, it could take hours, even days for this to cool down.


    Valarie was limping, the low gravity a boon now. She couldn¡¯t feel her right leg. The suit on that leg looked beaten but not broken. Crawling and floating, she made her way through the wreckage. There had been no sound, but a lot of vibration. Binary Bloom had been hit by something powerful, and the glowing metal indicated it wasn¡¯t a meteor.


    The green light in her helmet, the status of the wireless communication, had turned green again. The thin cable that had connected her to Micah was torn. He had vanished right in front of her in a blinding flash of light, and when the anti-flare dimming of the helmet switched off to let her see again, there was this hole and the jumble of metal and the glow.


    ?Micah!¡°, she shouted again into her microphone, ?It¡¯s Valarie!¡°


    There was static in her earphones. That was weird. The system was digital, how could there be¡­ then there were knocks or something that sounded like it. Interrupted by pauses, sometimes long, sometimes short.


    ?That¡¯s morse code.¡°, a male voice appeared in her helmet, it sounded vague familiar. She had heard it before, but couldn¡¯t quite place it.


    ?I¡¯m Elias. I¡¯m coming over.¡°


    She had heard the name before, but had no face in mind. Her leg hurt. ?That¡¯s good¡°, she thought, ?It means it¡¯ll be ok. I hope.¡° - she dimly remembered from her first responder course years ago that a person in pain is better off than someone who doesn¡¯t feel an injured limb. She couldn¡¯t recall why that was, though.


    ?The morse code¡°, the voice of Elias returned, ?says ?Stuck. 2 down¡®, I think. Micah, is that you knocking?¡°


    Knock, knock-knock, knock, knock.


    ?It¡¯s Micah¡°, Elias confirmed.


    Valarie turned off the magnetic boots on her right foot to relieve the leg. It helped a bit. She stood, or rather: floated, in place now. Her vision became slightly blurry and she realized she was about to pass out. She forced herself awake: ?Do you know my position?¡°, she asked.


    ?I¡¯ve got a bearing and a rough distance.¡°, Elias responded, ?I should be there in a minute. There¡¯s a lot of new holes in the structure, some of them are pretty big. What happened? Bloom¡¯s alarm went off.¡°


    Valarie pressed out an answer, focussing on speaking in order to blend out the pain: ?No idea. Our comms were down when it happened.¡°


    ?You injured?¡°


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    ?Yes¡°, Valarie said, clenching her jaw, ?Leg¡°


    ?If you¡¯ve got a flashlight, wave it around. Makes it easier to spot you.¡°


    She did that. An eternity passed, as she was slipping in and out of delirium. Then, Elias¡¯ voice came again: ?I see you, Valarie. Almost there.¡°


    She turned around and saw another space suit like hers floating towards her, the maneuvering thrusters doing small course corrections. With a metallic reverberation that she could feel as vibration in her left leg, the magnetic boots of Elias planted themselves next to her.


    He looked at her through the visor. She recognized him from the marketplace, and passed out.


    ?No, no, no!¡°, Elias exclaimed. In a suit he couldn¡¯t do anything if Valarie vomited or her tongue fell back and blocked her airway.


    ?Micah¡°, he said into the microphone, ?Can you hang on for two minutes or not? Knock once for yes, twice for no.¡°


    One knock in his earpiece.


    ?Roger. I¡¯ll be right back, need to get Valarie into an atmosphere and recovery position.¡°


    He pressed the unlock button on her left boot and picked her up. Then he pushed away and floated back towards the airlock.


    ?Micah, I¡¯ll keep talking to you so you stay awake. Knock from time to time, ok?¡°


    Knock


    ?Good. Give me some info. Always one knock for yes, two for no. You¡¯re stuck, right?¡°


    Knock


    ?Will I need tools to get you out?¡°


    Knock-knock


    ?That¡¯s good. Are you injured?¡°


    Knock


    ?Seriously?¡°


    Knock


    ?Damn, why didn¡¯t you say so? I could¡¯ve gone to you first and¡­ Alright. I see the airlock already. What the heck were you two even doing out¡­ No, that¡¯s not a question. I was just wondering.¡°


    Elias floated towards the airlock he had come out. He had been in the warehouse section of the station when the shutters came down. One of the 4D alien signatures had been lingering around that area. Elias knew of the maintenance exit and the space suits, part of his constant efforts to scout out the station for anything that could be useful. The shutters would only come down if there was a hull breach or one was immanent. Elias could guess which it was, so he had put on a suit, just in case. That¡¯s when he heard Valarie. He had seen two suits missing, so it was clear two people were outside at the worst possible time.


    ?At the airlock now.¡°, he said as he passed through the outer door. Valarie became heavier as they entered the gravity field of the station. He pushed the button that activated the airlock, and as soon as the display showed normal atmospheric pressure, he opened her helmet, made sure she was breathing normally, and dragged her inside the station. He quickly put her into the recovery position and went back outside after grabbing the toolbox that was standing on a shelf next to the space suits, just in case.


    Three minutes later, after a climb through the treacherous wreckage and still glowing metal, he reached Micah. The man was in a worse condition than Elias had expected. His left arm was gone, the stump sealed off by the suit¡¯s emergency sealing foam. His legs and right shoulder were entangled in bent pieces of metal. He could move his remaining arm, but not enough to pull on the metal pinning him in place. Smaller pieces of shrapnel had penetrated his suit in several places, the sealing foam showing the spots.


    Elias started untangling the metal pieces, some of which required him to pull with both arms and both legs, pressing against a solid beam that ran across this section. But Micah had been right, the work required strength and angles of attack that the engineer couldn¡¯t reach, but no tools. After a few minutes of pulling and pushing, Elias pulled Micah out of the final pieces and immediately moved him towards the nearest exit. He left the toolbox behind.


    The unnatural angles told him everything he needed to know about the other man¡¯s legs. Micah was bigger and heavier than Valarie, and while weight is not an issue in zero gravity, mass and inertia are. That and the fact that Micah had been deeper inside the wreckage made it take much longer to get him to the airlock, but Elias managed. As the pressure normalized and the inner door opened, he rested against the wall, exhausted.

 Retreat

    Several hundred meters ahead of Binary Bloom¡¯s outer hull, the eight Qyrl landing craft vanished from visuals and scanners. The station didn¡¯t have 4D scanners, because it had no reason to have them, but Nicodemus didn¡¯t need them to understand what had happened.


    ?They¡¯re phasing through the hull.¡°, he said into the microphone that connected him with the marines in the landing dock, ?Warehouse section, mostly.¡°


    ?Do we have a clear path there?¡°, a voice from the speakers answered him, intonation clearly making it out as a military man.


    ?No.¡°, Nicodemus stated, ?We have a few small hull breaches along the way, and two large ones in the sections immediately before it. They are depressurizing as we speak. The smaller ones can be sealed by the people in that section, but the larger ones I¡¯m not sure, and there¡¯s not many people at that end of the station.¡°


    ?Roger that. We can¡¯t fly out and attack from there. These freighters are not equipped for boarding operations. We have space suits. Are there airlocks to pass through the breached sections?¡°


    ?Let me check.¡°, Nicodemus turned to Ricky and asked him if he knew. The young engineer thought for a second, then nodded and went over to the display, tracing a path through the sections of Binary Bloom that were now sealed off from one another.


    Nico turned back to the microphone: ?Should be possible. You¡¯ll get a map with the path on the data channel in a minute.¡°


    Three sections away, inhabitants of Binary Bloom were running from a hole into space that had made a sudden appearance. The plasma ball had buried itself into an inside wall and was slowly losing heat, glowing less and less. Two people were being brought away by others, their arms slung over the shoulders of those dragging them. Air was rushing through the hole, carrying a few light items with it. Two people were quickly approaching it with a sheet of metal held between them. It wouldn¡¯t be a perfect seal, but the hole was the size of a volleyball and it would be less than two minutes until enough air would be lost for people inside to lose consciousness. Of course, the two now temporarily sealing the hole hadn¡¯t run the calculations, but they knew that time was of the essence. With a loud clang they let go of the metal sheet a hand width from the hole and the air pressure force it it flush against the hull. The whooshing of the air rushing out was replaced by a whistling sound of much less air escaping through the gaps still left. The impact was more heat than kinetic, so the metal around the hole was only slightly bent inwards, but it was enough to make a good seal difficult. People were scrambling to find other materials to add. Someone had run away to get the quick-set foam that would do a better job. Air was still rushing out from the space between the two hull layers of the station, but that would end soon, there wasn¡¯t much air in it anyways.


    Another three sections in, an industrial section had its hull still intact, but scorch marks along the walls showed that energy weapons had been fired very recently. Two corpses were lying face-down in the hallway, having been shot in the back while running away.


    An opening had been cut into the wall about halfway up. Behind it, the air duct was visible running along the wall at that precise location. It was narrow - for a human. It lead to a larger ventilation shaft and then to the smuggler¡¯s cache that Micah had uncovered. In front of that was the body of Baer, more scorch marks and flechette dents indicating he had gone down fighting. The cache itself was empty.


    Three more sections towards the end of Binary Bloom was the warehouse section. A Qyrl landing craft was sitting in an empty warehouse just two doors down from Yezz¡¯s storage. A dozen creatures, standing somewhat shorter than humans, with a slender build and an insectoid exoskeleton shimmering with metallic sheen were moving crate after crate from Yezz¡¯s place into the landing craft. They were pushing electrical pallet jacks, their elongated heads bobbing up and down with their almost running gait. There was no expression in their multi-faceted eyes, just different colors dancing over their surface in ways that other Qyrl could interpret as moods, but humans barely noticed. Their long, whip-like antennae twitched constantly, picking up subtle vibrations and changes in air pressure.


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    Of which there was quite a bit further along the corridor. One dead Qyrl soldier was being carried into the landing craft by his comrades. The others were shooting back, having taken cover at a corner. From further along, the beam of a plasma rifle appeared occasionally, in an attempt to find another target.


    It was Elias firing at the Qyrl he had spotted as he was dragging Micah back towards the core of the space station. He got one of them by surprise. He wasn¡¯t sure about one more, maybe that was a hit as well, maybe not. Valarie was ducked behind the corner to his right, Micah was still unconscious, lying at her feet. Elias had taken cover behind a large box of spare parts, solid enough to take a good number of shots.


    He checked the charge of the rifle. Half his shots had been fired. Shooting a plasma rifle inside a space station was risky, but unlike the more common flechette guns it would penetrate body armor.


    Elias had never seen Qyrl with his own eyes, but plenty of pictures. There was not mistaking them. He was constantly checking all around himself and had given Valarie orders to cover his back, in case any of them went into the 4th dimension, walked around him and appeared there. He reminded himself that ?into¡° was a typical human thought. For the Qyrl, the 4th dimension was just another direction, not something to step into. It was only to human eyes that it looked like it.


    Elias didn¡¯t realize that his intuition was more correct than he gave it credit. While operating within the 3D space of Binary Bloom, the Qyrl had to stay in the 4th-dimension cross-section that intersected with the 3D reality that Binary Bloom resided in. The same way that humans had to stay in, say, the aisle of a supermarket if they wanted to see along it or grab items from it. Being able to move to a different aisle was always possible, but made the other one inaccessible.


    The Qyrl were, however, shooting at him from dimensional diagonals. Near him the firing line had to be almost in the same 3D space, so his cover was protecting him. But it allowed them to shoot ?over¡° the walls right in front of them, so they could fire at him without leaving their cover. It was frustrating.


    He had seen the alien ships on his scanner before leaving his quarters, but details of the events outside the station were unknown to him. He had no idea how many Qyrl had landed on Bloom and where. He only knew that he was very close to this end of the station, so the chances were good that all Qyrl were in front of him and none behind.


    He fired two more shots at the corner he knew at least two Qyrls standing behind. The angle of his hits was obtuse and the hits glanced the wall, most of their energy bouncing off. There was a hole in the wall now, but it didn¡¯t penetrate all the way to the other side.


    Suddenly, Valarie cried out and a quick series of shots from his right alarmed him. Elias threw himself to the right and down, not knowing if it would get him out of the shot he knew was coming for him. It did not. Pain shot through his lower body as he felt needles penetrating his skin, burying themselves deep into his inner organs. A second shot almost missed him, a few more needles crashing into his upper body this time.


    Behind him, a Qyrl soldier fell to the ground, likewise hit by Valarie¡¯s gun. Out of the corner of his eyes Elias registered needles sticking out of the body armor around the chest area, like the spines of a hedgehog. Further up, what remained of the alien¡¯s face made it clear that she had aimed her second shot higher.


    Elias fought down the pain and forced himself back into a crouched position. He could barely feel his body, and the smell of blood and other fluids running out of him filled his nose. He aimed the plasma rifle once more and shot, just in the general direction of the Qyrl, just to tell them that he was still there and they¡¯d better not come out of their cover.


    Valarie came to his side, crawling. Without a word she pulled out a bandage and a tiny bottle of disinfectant from a pouch on her belt. It was all she had on herself as far as medical equipment went. She sprayed some of the fluid on Elias, and he gasped in pain, sinking down again. Just in time, as more shots from the Qyrl whizzed above the cover.


    ?Elias!¡°, he heard Valarie¡¯s voice from seemingly far away. He barely noticed her attempt to wrap the bandage around his torso. ?Blood loss¡°, he thought. He fired off one more shot, hitting the ceiling a good distance away from his target. He barely noticed the Qyrl retreating, ducking quickly as he fired, but otherwise not looking back. It seemed an orderly retreat.


    He slumped down, the rifle dropping to the ground next to him with a rattle. He felt his consciousness fading away, thankful that it took most of the pain with it. There was a tiny urge to say something meaningful, a few good last words. He couldn¡¯t think of any. His head slowly nodded downwards, to his chest. A foul smell of bile acid came into his nose and stirred him up slightly. The greenish-brown liquid from his gall bladder was dripping out of one of the holes the Qyrl had put into him. With a last effort of willpower he forced himself to stay awake, to do something, anything. His wandering mind found no action to take. Fading away like water on a sandy beach, even the sound of the girl - what was her name? - calling his name over and over faded away. Elias closed his eyes one last time.

 Ambassador

    A message appeared on the tablet in front of Amara. It said ?Departure to Felindar meeting in 10 minutes.¡°


    She gave it a quick glance, then turned her attention back to the holographic projection across the table. The antennae of the Qyrl ambassador were twitching very slightly, and indicator that he was controlling himself. The projection had been scaled up to be equal in size to the humans sitting at her side of the table and the projections of those unable to attend in person.


    ?A rogue faction?¡°, the projection of Ansom Tike, representative of Dephyr, inquired.


    ?As I said.¡°, the Qyrl ambassador repeated after almost one minute. The latency to the nearest Qyrl planet made a conversation almost impossible. The urgency of the situation required everyone to make the effort anyways. ?Our government has no intention to endanger the continued validity of the peace treaty between our races. Elements not under the control of the central government have apparently acted of their own accord. We are currently investigating these events.¡°


    ?Multiple military ships and a coordinated boarding action?¡°, Tike continued to question.


    The Qyrl remained expressionless, at least by human standards, even after the transmission time had certainly passed. Colors flickered across his insectoid eyes. Amara was aware that this was the Qyrl equivalent of human facial expressions, but needed her alien experts to interpret them.


    ?Indeed a worrying amount of independent force.¡°, the AI translation came from the Qyrl projection, ?It even appears that this faction has established a base of operation somewhere at the edge of Qyrl-controlled space. We will be looking into the matter and prosecute any criminal activity in accordance with our laws.¡°


    The thinly veiled reference wasn¡¯t lost on Amara. She spoke up: ?We are looking forward to hearing about any progress on this matter.¡°


    Her thoughts wandered back to her diplomatic training for a moment. Ambassadors among humans usually lived on the planet or country they were sent to. But alien ambassadors rarely did so, as living on a human planet would have been isolating and difficult for someone used to different gravity and atmosphere. They would essentially live on a space station that just happened to sit on the ground, and would need special vehicles or space suits to leave their home. So the Qyrl ambassador was more of a contact person.


    The meeting concluded with a few ritualistic formalities. The Qyrl ambassador disconnected. The human representatives from Dephyr and Dangorod remained online.


    ?Damn liar.¡°, Sibastyan remarked, to several nodding agreements. He had remained quiet during the diplomatic part of the meeting.


    ?Plausible deniability.¡°, the Dangorod representative stated plainly, ?Same as us.¡°


    They wrapped up the meeting with a quick round of opinions and summaries. The three planets were all in agreement that a war against the Qyrl should be avoided if possible. The short encounter had demonstrated that humans might have a better chance this time, but were still at a disadvantage.


    Amara and her entourage hurried towards the waiting shuttles. Eleven Royal Felindar hours had almost passed, and the time to put the cards on the table had come. The last news they had received from the pirate outpost had been negative. Nobody seemed to know where that specific hyperdrive core was. The only thing they had was the names of two crews who had made heists during the time period in question, one of which must have been the Xylar freighter. With most computers of the pirates damaged or wiped by the EMP, there was no telling if these were even still on the station.


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    So, in short, they had nothing going into the second round of negotiations with the Felindar. Sure, they would talk about the other items on the list, but it was an open secret that none of them were why the aliens had sent a diplomatic delegation instead of a simple merchant. Besides, Amara had already traded most of it for the information she had received.


    ?Plausible deniability.¡°, Amara mumbled, ?Seems to be in fashion.¡°


    The three shuttles made their way from the government skyscraper to the spaceport. Traffic was light around noon, and their priority treatment opened a direct route. Just before touchdown a message from an assistant notified Amara that the Felindar delegation had left its ship and would be in the conference room in a few minutes.


    The humans, again by numbers fitted to the alien diplomats, reached the room slightly before the Felindar, but waited before entering so that both delegations arrived seemingly at the right time. Small games. People in control don¡¯t wait for others and all that.


    With an exchange of formal greetings, the meeting began, the atmosphere immediately a bit more cordial than the first time.


    ?I understand that the first goods we agreed on the other day have already been delivered to you?¡°, Amara began the serious part of the conversation.


    Karzt wiggled his wingtips: ?Yes¡°, the translation came, ?They have. We are very happy about this rapid progress in our relations and her majesty has asked me to convey her personal thanks and greetings, with hope for even more cooperation in the future.¡°


    The alien specialists let Amara know through her earpiece, that this was a great honor, so she responded appropriately. Then she came to the main item, literally: ?There is, unfortunately, one item on the list that we are unable to procure at this time. We are working on tracking it down, but I can not say how long it might take. It could be days, it could be weeks.¡°


    She gave Gordon a signal and he transmitted the Felindar a copy of their list with all items marked as either already delivered, a delivery date, or an availability notice. All except one.


    The bird-like aliens studied the list, then exchanged meaningful glances with each other. Finally, Karzt himself answered, a sign showing its importance: ?This is an unfortunate circumstance. Can I conclude from your words that your promise from our discussion yesterday is still valid and that you are actively trying to acquire it?¡°


    Amara answered without hesitation: ?Yes on both of these questions.¡°


    ?We may be able to assist with these endeavors, if you will allow it.¡°, Karzt surprised them. And then even more with his next words: ?And we will be happy to do it free of charge, provided that we can agree on the item in question being sold to us immediately after its acquisition.¡°


    Amara kept her eyes on the Felindar diplomat, even though she could almost feel her ministers trying to exchange glances. She gave herself a few seconds to sort her thoughts before responding: ?A counter-offer, if I may. We are curious just why everyone is so interested in this particular item. Give us three days to study it in one of our laboratories. I ensure you that it will be brought here and not leave the planet except on your ship.¡°


    Karzt did the same as she had. He held her gaze and thought before answering. Or maybe he had an answer ready and was just waiting. Finally, he countered: ?One day. Keep in mind that we will have to stay here, waiting.¡°


    Amara controlled her facial expression. The comfort argument was clearly a front. She could only guess at his true motivation. ?Two days¡°, she said, ?counting from the moment the ship carrying it touches down on Erulas.¡°


    A flutter that her alien experts would later inform her was the Felindar equivalent of a sly smile was followed by the ambassador agreeing: ?On behalf of her majesty, I, Karzt Koptkek, agree to your proposition. Though you may find that your clock has already started ticking. The item has already arrived on your planet, recently.¡°


    This time, even Amara could not hide her surprise.

 Return

    The crew of the Rusty Bolt, or rather at the moment, the Grimalkin, looked at the news stream on the monorail with wide-open eyes. It was just a short side-note among a larger piece. The larger piece was about an Erulas¡¯ battleship being attacked and damaged by alien ships assumed to be from the Qyrl race. Inside the Junkstorm. The side-note in that piece was that all of that happened near a pirate outpost called Binary Bloom which had also come under attack.


    Twitch was the first to get out his tablet and search for a local newsfeed. Grubs was only seconds behind. Red looked outside and then grabbed both men while they were still busy with their tablets and pulled them out of the carriage at the next station.


    ?We need to get somewhere more private, I think.¡°, she said by way of explanation. They found a somewhat secluded corner near a vending machine for snacks and drinks.


    The news on Erulas were, unsurprisingly, focussed mostly on the battleship and its crew. All of this had happened an hour or so ago. Apparently an open emergency broadcast from another human ship involved in the battle had alerted the press.


    ?Fuck me sideways!¡°, Twitch exclaimed, his choice of words highly unusual for him.


    He tilted his screen so the others could see the article he had found. They all scanned the article with rapidly growing worry on their faces. After they had finished, there was silence.


    Grubs was the first to speak. Solemnly, he noted: ?I have family on Bloom.¡°


    Red nodded and looked at Twitch, interrupting him before he could say his piece: ?Can we get a channel to Bloom without the Erulas authorities noticing?¡°


    Twitch swallowed what he had been about to say and gave the question a moment of thought. Then he nodded: ?I think I can make that work. They¡¯ll be able to estimate the direction, but there are certainly other ships somewhere that way. It won¡¯t be conclusive. Only if they already suspect us as pirates would it pretty much confirm that.¡°


    ?Worth the risk to know what¡¯s going on.¡°, Red decided, ?The Rusty Bolt is still docked there and I¡¯d like to have her back in one piece. Grubs can ask about his family and you can ask about your girl.¡°


    Moments later, the three of them jumped into a train going the opposite direction, back to the spaceport. The ride went by without any of them saying a word, all lost in their thoughts, staring out the window, though actually into the distance.


    Back at the spaceport they made their way straight to the Grimalkin. They had checked the ship in for self-maintenance, so there was nobody else in or around the ship and no workers expected. Coming and going was pretty normal, so unless someone had followed them all the way, they were not acting suspiciously.


    Only once they had reached the bridge did they speak again. Grubs announced that he¡¯ll fire up the auxiliary generators and Twitch said he¡¯d need a minute or so to get a connection to Binary Bloom. He didn¡¯t say the ?if it is still there¡° part out loud, but the other two understood it anyway.


    A minute and a half later, they were connected to an operator on Binary Bloom. Pirate outpost or not, at its size, Bloom needed some level of organization. All three of them relaxed visibly. At least the station was still there and able to answer.


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    ?This is captain Red Rodriguez of the Rusty Bolt,¡°, Red started the conversation, ?which is currently docked in the hangar bay. We are off-station in another ship and heard the news. Can we get a series of local calls to our families and friends to check on them?¡°


    ?Sure¡°, the operator said, ?If I can reach them. Station is still in turmoil and a bunch of people are in medbay, mostly minor injuries.¡°


    Within the next minutes, they learnt the good and the bad news. Grubs was the first to get his calls, because family comes before friends and business contacts. He briefly spoke to his sister, who despite the tensions between the two was happy to hear that he was ok. She had not known that he was away, the two didn¡¯t speak much. He also learnt that his father was fine, having suffered a few bruises only.


    Grubs was also eager to ask about some of his friends, but he could see Twitch being nervous and decided to let him go. The station was ok and most people were fine from what he had learnt, that needed to be enough for now.


    Twitch tried to be connected to Valarie Sarron. There was no answer. He insisted the operator to try again. On the second call, someone answered, and Twitch went from worried to relieved to shocked within a few seconds: ?Hello?¡°, a female voice had said. ?Val!¡°, he had answered and started more when the woman at the other end dashed his hopes: ?I¡¯m sorry, no. This is nurse Sena. You are trying to reach Miss Sarron?¡°


    Twitch was unable to speak for a second. Then he caught himself. He immediately understood what a nurse answering meant: ?Uh. Yes. I¡¯m her boyfriend. How bad is it?¡°


    ?Well¡°, nurse Sena responded, ?We don¡¯t give out medical details to others than family members, but it¡¯s pretty bad. She¡¯ll make it, though. That¡¯s all I can say.¡°


    Twitch¡¯s heart sank. He croaked a ?thank you¡°, his voice failing. He sat down.


    The call was transferred back to the operator. Red stepped forward and asked about Yezz. There was no answer from her. But Red had multiple contacts and the third one picked up. She talked for a minute, but to Twitch and to Grubs, who had come over to support him, it was background noise.


    Red shook them out of their stupor after she had concluded the call.


    ?Yezz is dead.¡°, she stated matter-of-factly.


    Twitch looked at her: ?We need to get back there. Now.¡°


    Grubs nodded in agreement, but Red shook her head: ?It¡¯s two days. And Bloom is no longer a secure location.¡°


    Twitch¡¯s eyes widened slightly, then his expression hardened: ?That¡¯s why.¡°


    Red put a hand on Twitch¡¯s shoulder: ?We aren¡¯t medics and the Grimalkin is not a medical transport. Valarie, right? The medbay on Bloom is the best place for her right now.¡°


    ?I know¡°, Twitch said, ?And I ought to be there.¡°


    Grubs again nodded, before speaking up: ?I still don¡¯t know about my friends. And if Bloom is no longer safe, we need to get our stuff and the Rusty Bolt.¡°


    Red shook her head again: ?Heading there right now is the most suspicious thing we can possibly do. Everyone and their dog is after our cargo. We¡¯d arrive with more hostiles in tow. They might even attack the station again.¡°


    ?Don¡¯t care.¡°, Twitch¡¯s face was a frozen mask.


    ?Twitch is right, captain.¡°, Grubs added, ?Fuck our stuff. And without Yezz, do we even have a buyer for our cargo? No, what we should do is meet our people in the docking bay, transfer to the Rusty Bolt with them and be in and out in ten minutes. In two days, his girlfriend will be stable enough for a transport for sure. And the medbay on Bloom doesn¡¯t compare to a proper hospital like they have here.¡°


    Red looked at her crew, her gaze going from one to the other and back. They had never both opposed her so directly.


    ?As captain, my decision is to stay here.¡°, she said, keeping her voice as firm as possible, ?And as your friend, I say we wait two hours and then call again. The situation is in flux and things can change quickly.¡°


    There was a glimmer of hate sneaking into Twitch¡¯s gaze as he looked her in the eyes. Then he lowered his gaze in defeat and spoke softly: ?It¡¯ll take half an hour to get the ship ready anyways. And at least that long to get water and supplies for more people. Can we please prepare so that if we decide to go we can lift off immediately?¡°


    Red nodded. It would give Twitch something to do and keep his mind busy, though she dreaded the moment she would most likely have to shatter his hopes.


    He refused to look at Red again while they began preparing the ship.

 Salvage

    Khon was visibly agitated when Zala opened the door to her small private quarter. Like most of the crew, she had gone to take a nap, in order to use less oxygen and lengthen the time they all had. She had set up a watch schedule of two people, changed every two hours. She was well aware of the effect being stranded in the void had on the psychology of her people, and she didn¡¯t want anyone to have too much time thinking about it.


    ?Rescue is on the way!¡°, Khon had a tendency to always get to the point immediately. It was one of the reasons Zala valued him as second in command. She gestured towards the bridge and then following him there.


    The channel was still open, as a blinking light on the comms console indicated. Zala sat down: ?This is Captain Zala of the DSF Volcano. I hear you have good news?¡°


    ?Affirmative¡°, a jolly voice sounded out of the speakers, ?Pardon me. Captain Donnal, my ship is called the Vindictor, but it¡¯s little more than a shuttle. I got your call while en route to Binary Bloom and after the news from there figured shore leave would be a rather sad affair. I can swing by and my mechanic can have a look. Or if need be, you said twenty people and that¡¯d be a bit tight but possible. You¡¯d have to bring some supplies, though. We are stocked for ten passengers.¡°


    Zala glanced sideways. Khon stepped forward: ?Corporal Khon again. We lost some supplies, but there should be more than enough left to cover our needs for a few days.¡°


    ?Brilliant.¡°, Donnal continued, ?I got your coordinates. We¡¯ll be there in four or five hours.¡°


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    Zala looked over to the engineering station. They had 31 hours of life support remaining. The Volcano didn¡¯t have an in-space docking port, so it would be crew carrying supplies through the airlock and flying over. That would take an hour at least, depending on how much they packed.


    ?Any news from HQ?¡°, the asked Khon.


    ?Only what we got before you went to sleep. No Dephyr ships nearby, they are sending a fast transport but ETA is 75 hours.¡°


    Zala blinked, slowly. She had been well asleep when Khon woke her up. ?Tell them to send a hauler as well to salvage the Volcano. I¡¯m thinking of staying behind with a small crew. If the life support gives twenty people thirty hours, then a handfull of people should be able to wait it out.¡°


    Without a pause, Khon volunteered: ?I¡¯ll stay with you. Us two plus an engineer plus a navigator can operate this thing. And you¡¯re right, the Volcano is beaten up, but she¡¯s not lost. We shouldn¡¯t abandon her.¡°


    <hr>


    Sixty light-hours away, on the bridge of the Aegis Prime, there were also good news. The hyperdrive appeared repairable, with the right replacement parts. The Calidor outpost had agreed to send two transport ships that would evacuate half the crew. They had also struck a separate deal with the pirates from Binary Bloom. The Aegis Prime would accept twenty seriously wounded in exchange for the required spare parts. The battleship would be able to fly home under her own power, in a few days.


    General Norge was on the comms unit with the data team to send all the intelligence they had gathered during the battle to the headquarters. It might prove valuable in future encounters. They were also brooding over the news from the pirate outpost, which they had contacted a few minutes earlier. That the aliens disappeared after a brief attack on the station was puzzling. They had started a war over nothing? It made no sense.


    The teamwork between the general and Commander Frason worked now. One was attending to his ship, the other had his eyes on the larger strategic situation.

 Fading Out

    Nicodemus leaned back in his chair at the conference table. The room was packed with everyone who was important on Binary Bloom. Leaders of trade and craft guilds, members of his administrative staff, two of his engineers who had just finished their damage report, a few other influential people, even a representative of the Erulas¡¯ marines had been invited.


    Silence had fallen over the room at the end of the report. Nicodemus let it linger for a while and then filled it with the conclusion he himself had come to an hour earlier: ?You see why I have gathered you all for this meeting. While the major station machinery such as the generators and the gravity field are back online, the total damage to Binary Bloom is massive. Most of the medical devices in the medbay have been destroyed, we all lost our personal tablets and computers, lots of household appliances are scrap. It would take months to replace all of it, not to mention the cost.¡°


    He took a deep breath. It was still difficult to say it out loud: ?Binary Bloom is done for. We have almost eleven-thousand people on the station currently. How will we feed them if most cooking equipment, both private and in the restaurants is fried? We have close to three hundred wounded in the medbay and the doctors have no advanced diagnosis or treatment equipment. We lost at least some of our primary merchandise, no telling at this time how much.¡°


    He stopped speaking and let it sink in. His eyes wandered around the room, scanning faces. He could see a few who had already come to the same conclusion by themselves. It was the sadness in their faces, the hope that he had found a way out that he had had to destroy. Others were in shock or surprised. Some had the internal conflict written on their faces as they struggled with the realization of it all.


    One of the guild leaders cleared his throat: ?I¡¯m sure your assessment is correct, Nico. But most of us have our entire lives here. My people are running businesses and have families. They have been hit hard already. Giving up on Bloom means they¡¯ll lose everything.¡°


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    There was a murmur of agreement from most of the others. They and those they represented were in similar situations.


    ?Could we¡°, someone else spoke up, ?Reduce the population temporarily and rebuild?¡°


    Hope appeared in the faces here and there. Nicodemus felt physical pain over having to extinguish it before it spread too far, making the rational decision impossible: ?We have discussed this. The sustainable population of the station with the damage we have suffered is a few hundred. That is the amount we could support with the ships docked. You¡¯ve heard that the main control room escaped serious damage, but tons of smaller systems are fried. Let me tell you in plain language what my guys said in technical terms earlier: We are on the brink of a thermal disaster. Most of the sensors around the station are destroyed, so we are regulating the temperature by hand from the central control room, with the guards reporting in every hour which sections should be warmed or cooled. It¡¯s the same for a dozen or so essential systems.¡°


    He held their gazes while looking at them one after the other, even though it killed him on the inside to speak like this and to cause so much pain to his people: ?And how will we keep resupplying a repair crew with the auto-landing system damaged? Everyone who wants to dock with Bloom has to fly in manually. It¡¯s only a matter of time until someone misjudges by a few percents and a few hundred tons of metal smash into the docking bay. And I¡¯ve not even mentioned that most of the machining and maintenance equipment would need to be replaced before we can even begin repairs. Please don¡¯t make me go on, I hate this as much as any of you.¡°


    Finally, someone had come around and spoke up to agree with him: ?Nico is right. Even if we could get repairs going, how are we going to pay for it? If there is no operational Binary Bloom, we can¡¯t send out crews and can¡¯t sell alien tech. That¡¯s pretty much the only exports we have.¡°


    Nicodemus felt a wave of relief rolling over him. The dam had been broken. He saw a few others starting to nod. Others would need more time to realize the truth.


    ?Folks¡°, he said to the room, ?Let¡¯s all take some time to let it all sink in. How about we meet again in two hours to discuss the details?¡°

 The Hunt Begins

    The door burst into the room, flying off its hinges breaking under the impact. It was immediately followed by a flash grenade. A bright flash to blind and an acoustic shock to deafen temporarily. Five SWAT officers in body armor piled into the office room, taking up positions to cover all angles. A small decorative table near the door had been pushed over by the grenade¡¯s explosion, some of the papers on the first desk were flying through the air as well.


    Two bullets pierced the window from outside, leaving two clean holes. They were too fast to shatter the glass. They hit the two mannequins representing enemies, each in the shoulder of their weapon arms. Easier to hit than hands, which on actual people tended to move around more.


    The SWAT team secured the room in a well-trained sweeping maneuver, left and right, overlapping arcs of fire. Then two of them ran towards the other door, opening it and throwing another flash grenade through, then taking down the third mannequin inside with well-placed double-taps.


    ?Eight-point-six seconds.¡°, a voice from outside the training space announced.


    ?Sub ten seconds the third time in a row.¡°, another high-ranking police officer standing around the planning table concluded.


    The third man at the table was Norman Jones. As head of the intelligence agency, this was his operation. His face betrayed no emotion. Calmly, he ordered them to vary the layout of the location again and do another training run.


    Jones looked at his watch. Two hours since he had been briefed. He had been lucky that it was training day and everyone had already been assembled.


    Similar scenes would unfold across Dangorod over the day, and on Erulas. But not on Dephyr. He had sent a fast courier ship to Dephyr, but even a high-speed ship would need about a day.


    Jones did not know how soon they would face reality. He switched on his tablet. A quick glance at the incoming messages showed what he had expected - no cell of Qyrl collaborators had yet been identified.


    Jones walked outside while the training continued. He had seen enough and had other matters to attend to. Traitors to the human race. The SWAT team had the easy part of that. Finding them in the first place was the hard part. Jones liked a good challenge.


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    He saw one of the messages confirmed another fast ship had left from Dangorod for Erulas. It carried a quantum memory bank with a few terabytes of random data. An entangled copy was kept at the intelligence headquarters. The quantum nature of the memory ensured that reading the bytes destroyed them. MDI-QKD was the technical term. Jones understood the basics, but not the details. What he did know was that one-time-pads were considered unbreakable. Exchanging and keeping the one-time-pads securely was the challenge.


    Jones walked to his waiting shuttle. He had gained some respect for his counterpart on Erulas. They had sent out an open broadcast on government frequencies directed at any Dangorod spies listening in, letting them know that they urgently needed to send a truly secure message to Dangorod. The Erulas president herself had given a personal guarantee of immunity to anyone coming forward, revealing themselves. Of course the spies Dangorod had in place had quantum one-time-pads with them in any case. To the planets it was easy to send new ones. The disadvantage was in the name: You could only use a one-time-pad once. He regretted letting logistics reasons come in the way of using the same scheme for that pirate outpost. He would have wanted more details then just the short code message he had received as the last communication from there.


    Ten minutes later, his shuttle touched down at a local agency office. Five minutes after that, Jones was sitting in a secure conference room with the local head of operations and holograms of seven others around the planet.


    ?Agents¡°, he began, ?tell me what we have so far.¡°


    They went around the table in an orderly fashion. There were leads, but no certainty. They were all speaking in the vague manner of people all knowing what they are talking about but never saying it out loud. Any eavesdroppers would not know, at least not for sure.


    It was too early to strike, Jones decided. He dismissed everyone and remained in the room alone. There was time to think, so he did exactly that. He began to visualize the operation as if he were in charge. Where would he put the listening posts? What kind of people would he approach? What would he offer them? Which measures would he take to protect the mission?


    Calling up a holographic globe of Dangorod, and a map of the Junkstorm next to it, he began planning a hypothetical operation.

 Lockdown

    Amara Vance was left alone in her private office. She pushed the chair back and stood up, turning to the windows overlooking the city below. She always thought better standing or walking. In the distance she could see the spaceport. The Felindar were still there. And, somewhere, a pirate ship with a cargo that got at least four races interested. They didn¡¯t have the name of the ship. The intel came from an intercepted call the pirates had made, and they hadn¡¯t mentioned it, of course not.


    She leaned her forehead against the window and stopped her right hand from tapping nervously on it. She turned around and switched on the video wall, calling up the data that was pouring in from around the planet.


    Twenty-three points were marked on the map of Erulas. With a population that would cross the half-billion threshold in a few years, there wasn¡¯t just the capital city spaceport. To lock down the whole planet was a major logistics operation. At the moment, only five of the markers were green, indicating that all preparations were complete. Sixteen were yellow, in progress. Two were still red, they had not yet reported any progress back.


    ?Where are you hiding?¡°, she mumbled to herself while scanning the map. There was an isolated spaceport on the northern sea islands. Maybe there? Or in one of the major cities, to blend in with the crowds? Or at the cargo port in the mining regions, either the southern or the central mountain range?


    To the left side of the screen was a list of police units and their status. Almost fifty of them, about half were green.


    Amara remembered the meeting two hours earlier. ?Searching the whole planet¡°, she had said to her ministers,¡°for a small crew is a waste of time. But searching for a spaceship, there¡¯s only so many places one could land.¡°


    She tapped on the tablet on her desk and an overlay faded in over the world map. Split up into the sectors of the airspace monitoring stations. A few floors down, and in three other offices around Erulas, data scientists were pouring over the monitoring log data of the past two days. That was a bit longer than the time window given by the Felindar ambassador, but she wanted to be certain. Erulas was an inhabited, civilized world. You couldn¡¯t just set your spaceship down on a random field. But if you really, really wanted to, you might try to slip by the traffic controllers. It was worth the effort, because if they found someone had landed not on a spaceport, that was very likely who they were looking for.


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    A few sectors had already been checked. This process, also, would take at least a few hours to complete.


    She looked back towards the police units that were getting ready to search any spaceship that had touched down within the past two days and not already left again. She had already given orders to keep any ships not belonging to a company or individual on Erulas on the ground.


    Her specialists were working on narrowing down the possible ships so that they would only have to search a few of them. In the meantime, it was her responsibility to not lose sight of the bigger picture.


    She slowly sat down at her desk, calmed herself down with three deep breaths, and called the Aegis Prime.


    ?Vance¡°, she said as soon as the connection was established, ?Give me General Norge.¡°


    A short moment passed and the call was transferred to another comm unit. ?Madam president.¡°, the general greeted her, without further smalltalk.


    ?General¡°, Amara answered in the same style, ?I¡¯ve seen the data and summary of your recent encounter. But I want to get some more personal insights from someone with your experience.¡°


    The latency to the Aegis Prime was about double that to the other planets, too much for the AI to compensate. The conversation with the general had noticeable delays. So Amara switched to another manner of speaking - longer parts, more complete information in each speech act.


    She continued with almost no pause: ?I received your report about the attack on Binary Bloom. I don¡¯t see how the Qyrl could bring a fleet of ships there between the Aegis Prime taking up position nearby and the attack. What are your thoughts?¡°


    About five seconds later, she received his response: ?Madam president, I¡¯ve come to the same conclusion. We are currently operating under the assumption that they had no time to waste and are analyzing their approach vector for possible clues. My working theories are a forward base near the edge of the Junkstorm combined with an operational beginning before the Aegis Prime arrived at the pirate outpost or alternatively a base inside the Junkstorm and the Qyrl having discovered a way to shield themselves at least partially so they can man such a base. We currently have not enough information to rebuke or support either theory.¡°


    Amara made sure that the encryption was set to high-grade military. Even if the Qyrl could break it, as she assumed, it might take them some time. Then she informed the general: ?The following is currently top-secret, to be shared at most with Commander Frason. I want the Aegis Prime back to the pirate outpost. As quickly as you can manage. Search the place, top to bottom. I will send you more details when you arrive. And on the Qyrl, let me know as soon as you have something I can start working with from here.¡°


    The general acknowledged and Amara concluded the call. She stood up again and slowly walked over to the window, looking out over Erulas¡¯ capital once again. She would have loved to tell him about the Qyrl collaborators, but she could not risk tipping them off.

 Handover

    ?You did what?¡°, Red railed on Twitch. She was sitting in the small mess room of the Grimalkin, which was also the only social space aside from the bridge. The food she had just started on was now sitting on the table, being ignored.


    ?You agreed to get ready.¡°, he answered.


    ?Getting the ship ready.¡°, Red barked, ?Not requesting take-off permission from the tower.¡°


    ?How is that not part of getting ready? The slots need to be requested at least two hours in advance, and the orbital calculations and exit trajectory depend on the time we lift off.¡°, the pilot explained.


    Red was unfazed: ?We haven¡¯t even decided that we depart.¡°


    Grubs came into the room from the sleeping quarters. He had heard the commotion, but said nothing, simply standing near the doorway and listening.


    ?I¡¯ll pay the cancellation fee¡°, Twitch shot back, ?if we decide to stay.¡°


    Red lowered her head into her right palm, covering half her face before slowing raising her head again, face wiping over her palm as if she was trying to clean it. Then she looked at the ceiling and spoke to no-one in particular: ?Well, at least now we know that there¡¯s a lockdown on the spaceport, for what¡¯s clearly a pretend reason. Guess what us requesting a departure slot so soon after arriving does?¡°


    ?Captain¡°, Grubs spoke up, addressing Red formally. He normally didn¡¯t do that. ?Both Twitch¡¯s girlfriend and a good friend of mine are in critical condition. Enough to be evacuated to the trauma center of that Erulas battleship. Other friends of us are also wounded or in need.¡°


    Twitch nodded emphatically. Red turned to Grubs as if to respond, but he wasn¡¯t finished yet: ?Why don¡¯t we simply hand over this damn loot to the Erulas authorities and make a deal. Say free treatment for our friends and our immediate departure?¡°


    Red looked a Grubs. Then she shot a quick glance over to Twitch, before returning her gaze to the mechanic. She let his words sink in before she spoke: ?I have thought of that as well. Here¡¯s the thing: We don¡¯t trust these government people for good reasons. Right now we have friends in need as you say, and you¡¯re right. And we have our ship and all our belongings still on Bloom. Yezz is dead. The core is the only bargaining chip we have.¡°


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    She thought she saw a glimmer of understanding even in Twitch¡¯s face, and his resolute demeanor crumbling. She continued: ?As soon as we make our offer, they know we have it and we have it here. Why would they make a deal with us, criminals in their minds, if they can simply seize the ship and take it for free?¡°


    Silence fell over the mess room. Neither of the two men had something to answer. At the same time, there was too much at stake to simply give up.


    ?How about¡­ no, forget it.¡°, Twitch tried.


    ?Can we hide the core somewhere and then try to cut a deal?¡°, Grubs asked.


    They thought about it for a moment. Then Twitch shook his head: ?The spaceport is full of cameras. They would easily find out which truck unloaded something from our ship and from there it¡¯s ordinary police work to figure out where it went.¡°


    ?Damn¡°, Grubs simply said.


    After another moment of thought, Red spoke: ?Our domain is out there in space. There we can run, we can hide, we can act. Twitch, can we fly off without permission?¡°


    The pilot pondered very briefly: ?There won¡¯t be the usual automated systems, but manual takeoff, sure, possible in theory. Can¡¯t say if it¡¯ll work though. No idea what they have in place to ground ships. And there¡¯s the risk that they¡¯ll simply shoot us down, you know?¡°


    ?I¡¯d bet there¡¯s a few military vessels in orbit at all times.¡°, Grubs added.


    Red¡¯s face lit up for the first time in hours: ?No. I bet they have specific orders to not shoot us down. Because they want our loot. They¡¯ll try to disable our engines once we¡¯re in a stable orbit so they can board us.¡°


    Twitch cheered up as well: ?I¡¯ll see if the Grimalkin can make a direct ascend from this planet. It¡¯ll take more power than a usual flight path, but I think we can get the delta-V we need.¡°


    ?Smart¡°, Grubs agreed, ?We¡¯ll never be in a stable orbit, so they will have to wait until we¡¯re well outside the planet¡¯s gravity.¡°


    ?And we can probably make an improvised jump earlier than that.¡°, Twitch rejoiced. He turned around and quickly went over to the bridge, a slight spring in his steps.


    ?Can we make it to Bloom?¡°, Red asked, turning around to Grubs, ?We used up a lot of fuel and power coming here.¡°


    ?I¡¯ll check.¡°, he answered, ?But even if, given the news I don¡¯t think we can count on the refueling systems there being operational.¡°


    Red nodded, grim determination returning to her face. ?Thought so. I¡¯ll get us refueled here. It¡¯ll take another hour or two, even if the schedule emptied up because of the departure block. Let¡¯s hope it doesn¡¯t raise suspicion and they¡¯ll give us the time.¡°

 Lucky Break

    A knock on the office door.


    ?Come in.¡°


    ?Agent Ayres¡°, the security guard said after opening the door, stepping inside and closing the door again behind him, ?We have someone downstairs you should talk to. It may be some kind of swank, but he seems earnest and he brought a list of names that all check out.¡°


    Edric Ayres looked up from his paperwork and tilted his head. ?What¡°, he asked, ?are you talking about?¡°


    The guard took a step forward and stood halfway between the door and the desk. It was a small office, one desk and a few drawers, two tall but slim windows, no decorations. He explained: ?Ten, maybe fifteen minutes ago a man came to the front desk. He claims to be working for an enemy intelligence service that is intercepting and decrypting our communications. He wants to speak to a high-ranking agent who can make a deal with him. He didn¡¯t specify what. He brought a list with ten names of field agents, and they are all correct.¡°


    Ayres perked up. His eyes twitched. ?That¡°, he said, ?is classified information. Good call coming to me. Where is he now?¡°


    ?We put him into one of the interrogation rooms. Room three. One of the cozy ones, for relaxed questionings.¡°


    Ayres stood up: ?Excellent. Let¡¯s go.¡°


    One elevator ride and two corridors later, Ayres entered what for all intents and purposes looked like a meeting room. He brought two large cups of Dangorod¡¯s best apple tea. He kept his eyes on the visitor, in order to not betray the hidden microphones and cameras with a sideways glance.


    The visitor didn¡¯t stand up to greet him. Ayres trained eyes spotted the man¡¯s left foot tapping a rhythm on the floor, barely noticeable. ?No need to be nervous.¡°, he disarmed the stranger with a fake smile. He put both cups on the low table, between the two couches in the room. He made a point of putting both cups in the middle, so that the other man could pick whichever cup he preferred. With a short hesitation, the man did so, picking the cup Ayres had carried in his left hand.


    ?What¡¯s your name?¡°, he said while sitting down, making a point of picking up his tea and taking a sip.


    ?Jacob Smith¡°, the man said, a bit too quickly.


    ?No it¡¯s not.¡°, Agent Ayres said with a fake friendly smile, leaning back on his couch. Out of the corner of his eye he registered that the man¡¯s foot had begun tapping again.


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    ?Well¡°, not-Smith said, flustered, ?for this conversation it is.¡°


    ?Jacob¡°, Ayres countered, keeping to himself that all the information Dangorod had on this individual was already in the display his contact lenses were showing to him, ?What brings you here today?¡°


    Jacob leaned forward and put one hand on the table, still not touching his tea: ?I want immunity and witness protection.¡°


    Edric Ayres let the words hang in the air for a full four seconds before he responded: ?That depends on what you have. Is it worth the expenses the government will have to grant those demands?¡°


    ?Very much it is, yes!¡°, not-Smith shot back immediately, ?Have you seen the list?¡°


    Agent Ayres pulled the piece of paper out of his suit pocket: ?This one? Yes, of course. It is enough to get me here and talking to you. But if you want to sell me something, I need to know what I¡¯m buying. Keep the details to yourself until we have agreed, but tell me in broad terms.¡°


    The other man¡¯s eyes darted around the room while his mind was obviously racing. Then he took the cup of tea and said: ?Alright. In broad terms, we have been listening in on all your secret talks. I can show you where and how.¡°


    Ayres studied not-Smith for a few seconds. Then he calmly asked: ?And you are doing this why? What is your interest in coming to us?¡°


    ?As I said: Protection. I¡¯ve realized what we¡¯re doing is wrong. I¡¯d prefer to not go to prison for the rest of my life.¡°


    ?Hm¡°, Ayres said, letting the silence wash over them. Seconds passed like viscous honey. Five, ten, fifteen seconds before not-Smith spoke again: ?I can show you today. Right now in fact. Before more of your secrets leak.¡°


    The faintest hint of a smile came on the face of Agent Ayres. He forced it away.


    ?I need one minute to discuss with my people.¡°, he said with the same calm he had shown throughout. ?I think we can come to an arrangement.¡°


    He stood up and left the room. On the corridor outside, as soon as the door closed behind him, he walked briskly to the next door on the same side. Behind it, two interrogation specialists had been monitoring the conversation through the cameras and microphones. They looked up as he entered, having expected him already.


    Ayres came in, closed the door and walked halfway towards them, turning an empty chair around and sitting down.


    ?He is convinced of what he is saying.¡°, the woman summed up.


    ?He is nervous¡°, the male officer said, ?as you have probably noticed. Given the circumstances and what he is doing that is normal. It does not flare up when he speaks. His gestures and body language are congruent with his words.¡°


    Ayres nodded: ?This is dynamite. I¡¯m classifying this as a top-secret operation. Nobody not authorized by me personally can know about it. I don¡¯t see how anyone could do something like that without an insider.¡°


    He sat there, working everything over in his mind for a moment. Then he stood up: ?Get me Prosser from the witness protection program here. Into this room. And Nood from the response team. Or his second. I¡¯ll keep our man talking. See if you can dig up more on him. Family, job history, anything. Send what you think important to my lenses.¡°


    Agent Ayres stood up. His promotion was waiting in the next room, if he could make that deal and take down that enemy operation. He would have to do it himself. If he handed this upwards, they would take over and get the glory. ?Not again¡°, he mumbled to himself while he walked back to talk with not-Smith.

 Vindictor

    A dozen men and women in space suits were moving back and forth through the empty void between the DSF Volcano and the Vindictor, which had turned out to be indeed little more than an oversized shuttle. Zala had taken a short tour on their rescue ship to make sure everything was adequate for her crew. It was. The ship had compartments for ten passengers, just as its captain had said. But that meant ten beds as well as space for ten people to eat or spend time. Among the social area, mess hall and sleeping quarters, her sixteen crew would easily fit and have a somewhat comfortable stay for the two days or so. Four of them would stay behind and wait for the salvage vessels.


    Zala was reasonably happy with the situation as she overlooked the crew bringing over personal items, supplies and other necessities. As she had correctly predicted, it meant hauling them through space. A hundred meters or so of void stood between the two ships. A single trip took about two minutes. Plus another minute or so of airlock time on each end. Make if five minutes for a round-trip. It would take three or four round-trips each. Yes, one hour would be enough time.


    She turned back from the window to Captain Donnal. ?I¡¯ve already talked to my superiors while we were waiting for you. Bring our people to Dephyr and you¡¯ll get paid an ordinary passenger fee for each, plus a 20% rescue bonus.¡°


    Donnal nodded and seemed pleased. Zala continued: ?I¡¯ve also made sure no overzealous bureaucrat will give you any shit about overloaded passenger capacity or whatever. My crew will keep to themselves and not be in your way.¡°


    Donnal raised his glass for a toast: ?Pleasure doing business with you.¡°


    They shook hands and walked out of the room together, Zala to the right towards the airlock and Donnal to the left towards his bridge. On her way, Zala gave nods or a few words to the members of her crew that were bringing over or stowing away supplies. There was a queue at the airlock, so she had plenty of time to put on her space suit.


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    Things went well, given the circumstances. Almost too well. Zala had been looking for problems, for something wrong. If she would give her crew into the hands of a shady pirate with a barely space-worthy junk vessel. But no, Donnal seemed a capable and cheerful trader and the Vindictor was not a new ship but well maintained. The crew, four in addition to Donnal, could have been on any ordinary civilian ship.


    She finished putting on her suit while pushing away these thoughts. ?Girl¡°, she said to herself, ?you¡¯re letting things get to you.¡°


    Qyrl. She couldn¡¯t get over it. For years she and her ship had been on patrol to take out their constant unmanned probes. She had not expected to ever meet actual alien warships. Sure, it was what the military trained for. But the Qyrl war happened when she was still a child and was just a piece of history. Until today.


    She entered the airlock with three others of her crew who went back again to bring more crates over. Loading was almost done, they said, probably their last journey. The inner door closed and sealed itself. They put on the helmets. The adaptive polymer shrunk to snugly fit her head, like a ski mask. Only the area around her eyes was transparent. The breathing channels over her mouth and nose opened up to allow unobstructed airflow. A small indicator light at the edge of the integrated heads-up-display turned green. Seconds later, the sucking sound of air being pumped out of the airlock. Then the outer airlock door opened. The blackness of space always impressed her. All those images of space with the colorful nebula don¡¯t show that they represent such a tiny area that to the human eye, they are just faint dots in an otherwise perfect black. The real color of space was black. Real, total black. Not the shiny black of a car or the black of fabric that was more a very dark gray. The complete absence of light was incredible. Her ship was near invisible, because no nearby sun was shining on it, so there was no light to reflect. Only the lights around its airlock were visible, the body of the ship was as black as the surrounding space.


    She pushed herself off in the direction of the Volcano. The guidance system locked on to the beacon on her ship and fired the small thrusters in her suit, making sure that she would float perfectly into the small opening.


    She heard the men and women of her crew who were floating over with her cracking jokes. Most people became talkative in outer space. A way to deal with the utter emptiness.

 Trust Issues

    ?But can we trust the Dangorodians?¡°, Gordon asked for the third time.


    ?Or that pirate governor¡°, Sibastyan added, ?Or anyone, really.¡°, he turned to his right, ?Dr. Chen, any insights on the Felindar motives or why the Xylars stopped talking to us?¡°


    The other four in the room looked at the xenopsychologist. Amara had called them into a closed session to discuss the next steps. Aside from her two ministers, she had invited Dr. Chen and Colonel Sato. She had not explained her selection.


    Dr. Chen cleared his throat: ?The Felindar appear to be sincere. They are primarily traders and trust is their strongest currency. Every race in the galaxy does business with them exactly because they can be relied upon to keep their agreements. It does not matter how unimportant humankind is within the cosmos, this is more about them than about us.¡°


    He fiddled with a pen before continuing: ?Really, the Qyrl are the wild card in this. As I said before, the Xylars are a very cohesive species. They have trouble comprehending the concept of a ?rogue faction¡® beyond the purely rational understanding. But the Qyrl, they are not unlike us humans, psychologically speaking. It is absolutely possible that their ambassador said the truth. There are dozens if not hundreds of factions within the Qyrl society. They debate, disagree and even go to war with each other really very much like us. The main difference between humans and Qyrl is their bio-mechanical technology and the symbiosis with this ?Shimmervine¡® plant-like organism.¡°


    Amara give the alien expert¡¯s words ample consideration before she concluded: ?Makes sense. If the Qyrl are fractured themselves, and understand us as good as we them, they can reasonably assume that it is possible to corrupt humans and use them as agents. Throughout our species¡¯ history we were never known for having much consideration for each other¡¯s benefit.¡°


    ?So what¡°, Sibastyan asked, his role as minister of defense giving him a different perspective, ?about the Xylars and their odd silence over the past days? Do we need to prepare for an attack?¡°


    ?No¡°, Dr. Chen shook his head, ?I do not think so. I have two hypothesis regarding them. One, they have stated their demands clearly, they are merely waiting for us to comply. They have always been patient or rather: comfortable in waiting. Alternatively, they could have handed the matter off.¡°


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    ?To whom?¡°, Gordon wondered.


    ?Obviously the Felindar are the first option.¡°, Chen continued, ?Offering the Xylars to get back their stolen tech through a business transaction is right up their alley.¡°


    Amara nodded again, ?Makes sense. They are now waiting if the Felindar can deliver.¡°


    She turned to the female officer who hadn¡¯t said anything: ?Colonel Sato, what are our military options, if they become necessary?¡°


    Sato was prepared. She stood up and sent a table of figures from her tablet to the large screen. It showed number of ships and combat strength estimates for humans, Qylr and Xylars.


    ?As you can see¡°, she began, ?when it comes to the Xylars we are, to put it bluntly, helpless. A serious attack force sent against Erulas would brush our entire space fleet aside. We may be able to buy an hour of time for civilians to evacuate the planet. If they intend to lay waste to Erulas, we know them to have the weaponry to do so. Of course that is a worst-case scenario. Dr. Chen is more competent than me to judge whether they would go to such extremes for one tech item.¡°


    She pulled the attention of the room back to her with a gesture and continued: ?The Qyrl are slightly more advanced than humanity, but we have a number of effective weapons now that we did not have two decades ago. The Aegis Prime has demonstrated them earlier today. We could most likely hold off an attack, at a considerable cost. We are in contact with the other planets to coordinate a defense. Our sensor stations around the Junkstorm should detect an invasion force.¡°


    ?They didn¡¯t detect the force attacking the Aegis Prime!¡°, Gordon intervened.


    ?That is correct.¡°, Sato picked up the remark, ?Long-distance detection is a matter of scale. The Qyrl need a lot more ships to attack one of the planets. We have already raised the alert because we need to expect small strike forces like that one. It¡¯s the difference between moving a few special force units into enemy territory or marching an entire army.¡°


    Gordon sunk back in his chair, apparently satisfied with the answer.


    Sibastyan looked across the room, taking in everyone¡¯s reactions. ?So¡°, he asked, ?what are our next moves?¡°


    Amara took back the conversation: ?Our priority is getting that core. We cannot trust the Qyrl, so making sure no other alien race is cross with us is crucial. The other thing we need to take care of is finding out if there are indeed humans working with the Qyrl. Gordon, you and me work on the traitors. Get started without me, I¡¯ll join in a few hours. This is all important, but there¡¯s also an entire planet that needs to be run.¡°, she turned to the other side, ?Sibastyan and Sato focus on the Qyrl threat. And Dr. Chen, I need you to double check our Felindar and Xylars assumptions.¡°

 Delayed Message

    Red was sitting on the couch, a tablet in hand. The quarters on the Grimalkin were pretty small. The ship was meant for short trips, a week or so, two at most. So even the captain¡¯s cabin was about three by four meters. It had a bed, a small sitting area and a small working table. A built-in wardrobe for clothes and some drawers and shelves for other personal items. It was in the sleek minimalistic style that had been in fashion three decades ago when it had been built. A few curving lines of metallic colors decorated the walls, breaking up the symmetry and simplicity.


    And on the couch, Red was sitting, motionless. A video message that the interplanetary mail system had just delivered to her. The face, frozen in time as she had hit the pause button not even one second in, was that of her friend, now dead. It was troubling Red to see her on the screen, alive. A dissonance between the reality she knew and what her eyes showed her. It had taken her a few moments to process.


    She collected herself, then unpaused the message. The face on the screen began moving again, even though Red¡¯s face was still frozen in shocked surprise.


    ?Hi there Red.¡°, Yezz said from the screen, ?If you get this message, I¡¯m probably dead. Hope you don¡¯t hear it from me first. Anyway. There¡¯s a few things I need to tell you and a favor I need to ask. Let me start by explaining why all the skullduggery. Very soon after we talked in my office, I found out that several people knew what loot you had brought. People who to my knowledge had no way of knowing. And I know our place and who knows whom quite well. Maybe word just got around or there is more than one, but at least one person on the station knows way more than they should and has the will and capability to act. The other day someone tried to break into my warehouse and from the marks I found had proper tools. Probably just bad luck, maybe got disturbed or something. I¡¯m rambling, sorry.¡°


    There was a short pause as she apparently had to sort her thoughts before continuing.


    ?The point is: It¡¯s not safe here. I sent you away not just to get the package looked at, but also to get you off the station. To put us all into a situation where someone can¡¯t just come in and take it. I¡¯m recording this message in case I¡¯m wrong.


    If you return to the station, talk to Nico before. He¡¯s one of the few people I¡¯d trust with my life. Talk to him and let him know that there¡¯s a mole or something among his population. I think this is a serious leak, not just some shenanigans between outlaws. If I figure out more I¡¯ll let him know myself but just in case tell him that.


    But between us, if you get this message it means you¡¯re not safe here. Don¡¯t return before you¡¯ve figured the situation out.


    Now for the favor I need to ask. In the appendix you¡¯ll find bank account details and address and contact data, all on my old home, Chroma. These are my pension fund and my family. Withdraw it and give it to them - they can¡¯t get a bank transaction that could somehow be traced back to me or the government will confiscate the money. That¡¯s the only favor I¡¯m asking for. Make sure my folks get their share of what I leave as an inheritance.


    And you, old friend, take care.¡°


    Red didn¡¯t move as the message ended. She sat in silence for a long time. She didn¡¯t even have any coherent thoughts. It wasn¡¯t the tranquility of Mauna, or inner peace. It was more that her inner dialog had been silenced by the impossibility of finding words. She didn¡¯t know what to say, what to think or what to feel. So she simply sat there.


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    For minutes there was perfect silence and stillness.


    Then Red took a deep breath as if waking from a dream. She slowly put down the tablet, resting it on the couch next to herself. She pushed herself up to her feet and slowly walked towards the door. She paused briefly before exiting, pulling herself straight. She was still the captain of this crew.


    Moments later, she reached the mess room. It was essentially down the hallway. The Grimalkin was a small ship. She had heard Twitch and Grubs talk from the moment she had left her cabin. As she entered, they interrupted their talk and looked at her.


    ?Hey¡°, Grubs said, and then immediately came to the point in his sometimes blunt way, ?It¡¯s been almost two hours. Do we have a plan?¡°


    Red nodded and walked over, sitting down at the table. There was space for five, maybe six around it, so for the three of them it was a comfortable size. ?Yes¡°, she finally said, ?I think we do. But first, any news from our people?¡°


    Twitch was nodding emphatically: ?Yes, yes. We heard back from Bloom twenty minutes ago, about. Maybe half an hour. Updates as expected. They have sent the most serious cases off to that Erulas battleship. It¡¯s stranded for now, but mostly operational and has a good medbay. The one on Bloom is bust, they said.¡°


    ?And ¡­ ¡°, Red began, but Grubs interrupted her: ?Our people are among those serious cases. We can¡¯t do much for them, but we can¡¯t just sit here.¡°


    Red was perplexed. She couldn¡¯t remember when Grubs had ever interrupted her. She pushed the thought aside for later and continued: ?We should get off this rock. It was a mistake to come here.¡°, she admitted, ?Now it¡¯s time to fix that mistake. The Grimalkin is a fast ship. We can get there in about two days I reckon.¡°


    Twitch nodded, ?Two days and a bit. I ran a preliminary calculation that came to about 50 circadian hours.¡°


    ?Problem is¡°, Red took a deep breath and leaned forward slightly, ?if we run from Erulas like the common criminals we are, I don¡¯t think they¡¯ll just welcome us as honored guests on a battleship belonging to the space fleet of, well, Erulas.¡°


    Twitch opened his mouth and closed it again. Grubs mumbled something that could have been ?you¡¯re right¡° or something similar, but was impossible to understand.


    ?So here¡¯s the plan.¡°, Red continued, ?I¡¯ve used the time to call in some favors. We will launch in an hour, just after sunset. Not much difference to the sensors, but visual confirmation will be more difficult. It¡¯s not yet entirely dark and the engine firing up won¡¯t be as immediately visible. If anyone hails us, we¡¯ll cite medical emergency and tell them to go to hell.¡°


    The other two were intently listening.


    ?The situation around Bloom is still developing, so we¡¯ll make detailed plans while in transit. Our destination is Binary Bloom. We¡¯ll switch ships and get to their battleship in the Rusty Bolt. The Grimalkin isn¡¯t registered on us and the crew manifest we gave the port authority is a fabrication. They won¡¯t know that we¡¯re the same people who dusted off their planet two days prior.¡°


    ?Good idea.¡°, Twitch added, ?And if they need to evacuate anyone to a planetary hospital, we can help. Rusty is faster than their transports.¡°


    Red tilted her head in a jerking motion. ?That¡¯s actually a brilliant idea, Twitch.¡°, she said, ?We can offer our services for a small fee and help out our people at the same time.¡°


    Grubs stood up: ?We have a plan. I¡¯ll go and make complete our pre-launch sequence.¡°

 MedEvac

    The docking bay was busy. Extraordinarily busy even for Binary Bloom. People were packing themselves into the available ships as densely as would be borderline acceptable for two or three days.


    ?One piece of luggage per person, I¡¯m sorry.¡°, one of the guards at the entrance told an elderly man. ?I¡¯ll have to take this. Tell me your quarters and we¡¯ll bring it back there. You left your destination at the door? We¡¯ll send it with a future transport. Nico gave his word.¡°


    At the far end, Nico and a few of his administrative staff were overseeing the evacuation. There were twenty-seven ships of all kinds docked at Binary Bloom. The two ships the Erulas marines had come in were almost finished loading. They carried the twenty seriously injured from the now defunct medical center and would leave first. Nico had also convinced them to take another twenty spouses, parents or children with the wounded. Any person off the station counted.


    ?What¡¯s the total?¡°, he asked the dock master.


    ?Just 640, I¡¯m afraid.¡°, was the answer he didn¡¯t want to hear, ?There¡¯s just five haulers down there, the rest are smaller ships.¡°


    Nico nodded: ?What do we have incoming?¡°


    ?We called everyone who owes us a favor or felt like taking up a lucrative offer. We¡¯ll get another 500 or so boarded tomorrow, and then on average a thousand per day after that.¡°


    Nico stared into the distance. He had never expected to oversee the shutdown of Bloom. Nor did any of his staff. Without looking at them he could tell that their faces were serious and hard, just like his own. They had a job to do, and he knew he could count on them to do it. But they all hated every second of it.


    ?Where are we on section control?¡°, he asked, without turning around.


    Someone behind him to the left answered: ?We¡¯ve cleared out two barely used sections. We are sealing them off now and will dump excess heat into them as needed. That¡¯ll be enough for today. If the evacuation continues to work smoothly, we can keep pace with our thermal demands by gradually closing more sections as they empty.¡°


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    Down the docking bay, the last medical transport was arriving. The last two seriously injured. Four marines took the collapsible stretchers and wheeled them unto one of their ships. The other one was already closing up. As Nico understood, only one of the ships would fly towards the battleship, the other one would head back to Erulas. But two days in space was too much for the patients, so the battleship was their destination.


    The final two stretchers were brought on board. The ship was a repurposed transport ship, with a cargo bay converted into temporary quarters for the marines. It now squeezed in twenty medical emergencies and twenty family members. The flight to the Aegis Prime would last an hour at most, much of it maneuvering time. But even so it was somewhat cramped. And it smelled of antiseptics and sweat.


    Micah was one of three patients inside the tiny medical bay of the ship that was not equipped for serious cases. He had been put into an induced coma. A piece of the spacesuit was still around the stump of his severed arm, the emergency seal offering better protection than what the overloaded and dysfunctional medical center on Binary Bloom could do. Splints fixated his legs and blood-soaked bandages covered the worst wounds that had been closed with staples. A pressure IV hang on the bedside.


    Two rooms away, Valarie was slumped over on a bed that was intended for a marine. Her leg was splinted and a few plasters and bandages covered the bruises and cuts she had suffered. But the only thing they could do about her extensive inner bleeding was pumping her so full of painkillers that she was barely conscious. She had not even noticed the other two in the room, sitting across from her on the other bed. A boy and his mother who had been hit by a falling steel beam. She woman¡¯s hip was shattered and she was sobbing quietly.


    ?Departure in thirty seconds.¡°, a voice from the intercom announced.


    ?So this is it.¡°, Valarie thought, half alive. Not the way she had expected her life among pirates to come to an end. Aside from that, she did not really think anything. The drugs prevented her from focussing on a continuous train of thought. She felt numb and overwhelmed more than sad, mostly. A part of her felt sorrow at the things she had to leave behind. There had not been an opportunity to visit her private quarters. There was a printed picture of Twitch somewhere that she would¡¯ve really wanted to have right now. She had had a bunch of digital pictures on her tablet, but that had not survived the EMP.


    The ship began to vibrate slightly as she slumped back, its engines coming to life and the propulsion systems moving it out of the docking bay. A slight jerk indicated the ship¡¯s own artificial gravity field taking over from the station¡¯s. Valerie fell back into a semi-conscious state again as she left Binary Bloom, for the last time as she expected.

 Bust

    The door crashed into the wall from the battering ram impact it had received, and a split second later a flash grenade rolled across the floor. Its explosion blinded and deafened the two people inside the small, tidy office. Four members of Dangorod¡¯s intelligence police entered the room, their visors un-tinting automatically. They were wearing light body armor over their uniforms. The first two into the room were holding automatic pistols ready and aimed, the next two entered with tasers.


    As the reverberations of the flash grenade ceased and the ear protectors of the intrusion team opened up again, the faint pings, static and humming of the electronic equipment scattered around the room came through again. It was a faint but constant background noise.


    The team was trained to take no chances, and the two people inside the room were immediately hit with taser shots. Jerking with uncontrolled muscle contractions, they fell over, one slumping down in his chair and hitting the desk and keyboard in front of him with his head, the other crashing to the floor.


    ?Secure¡°, one of the armed police, from the voice apparently a female but otherwise unrecognizable under the gear, shouted.


    Edric Ayres slowly entered the room. The small amount of smoke from the grenade billowed over his legs as he walked, only appropriate music missing for a cinematic dramatic entrance. He walked right to the middle of the room, now fairly crowded with seven people inside. The air smelled of coffee and a half-eaten sandwich.


    The intrusion team switched towards securing the area. The two who had used their tasers now holstered them and pulled out their automatic pistols. The other two went outside to secure the corridor. The explosion of a flash grenade was sure to alert everyone on this floor and at least the two floors above and below. According to the registration data, there were only ordinary offices, but so was, on paper, the one behind them.


    Ayres took in the scene, inspecting the equipment and documents he found carefully. Behind him, his team tied up the two people they had surprised and searched for weapons and ID. The equipment was about what he had expected, but only a part of it. The more bulky antennas and dishes had to be somewhere else. For example through the second door. They had scanned the floor just before entering and there had been no signs of anyone in the other rooms connected to this office, so it was only after tying up the prisoners that the two police officers moved towards that door to secure the next room.


    The next room smelled of dust and stale air. It was dimly lit, the windows covered with simple cloth. Inside, what could have been a large office for a dozen people was in a state of bare walls and floors, an unfinished construction site. Probably the condition before any work to install offices was done. Agent Ayres had seen the layout of the area on the blueprints he had obtained from the building register. The first room had been intended as the lobby. There would be two more rooms, a kitchen and a toilet. But he had already found what he was searching for. While walls, floor and ceiling had been left unfinished, the room in front of him was far from empty.


    Despite his extensive training, Ayres could barely contain his excitement. The informant had been truthful. The jumble of equipment in front of him was clearly several interception devices, parts of it reaching all the way to the ceiling and some parts of it disappearing midway in strange angles the eye refused to properly recognize. These were the most exciting parts - multi-dimensional parts used to intercept hyperspace communications. Nobody outside the military should have these. In fact, even the military had just two of them. If for nothing else, there would be enough legal grounds for the arrests they had just conducted.


    His team was already moving out to secure the other rooms. There was nothing unexpected in the toilet and kitchen. One of the two smaller offices connecting to the large room - intended as supervisor offices or meeting rooms - was empty and the stale, dusty smell made it obvious it had not been used for quite a while, if ever. The other room contained an UPS to enable the other equipment to function even during a power failure and a small storage server. This was the Crown Jewels in Ayres¡¯ mind. He expected it to contain the intercepted and possibly decrypted messages that would validate his actions and ensure his promotion. A few flashing lights showed it was still active. The enemy had had no time to shut it down, and he hoped it would still be decrypted.


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    He pulled out his communicator while walking back towards the control room they had busted into. ?Send in the tech team.¡°, he ordered. He would spend the five or so minutes it would take them pressing keys at the computers in the front to ensure no automatic screen lock activated. Taking them out without warning in the middle of the day had given him the opportunity to catch them in the middle of work, logged in.


    It took twenty minutes for the second listening post on the other side of Dangorod, in the unofficial industrial hub of the planet, to realize that something was wrong. The operation was even smaller, instead of two people per shift for three shifts around the clock, it was just three people in total, with overlapping times so they could cover the extended workday from about six in the morning to about eight in the evening. There was little activity at night, with the few factories running around the clock mostly automated anyways.


    Their equipment was less sophisticated as well. And their command structure went through the main site that had just been raided. There was an almost visible tension hanging in the air after they had realized the situation and the implications dawned on them. Once it did, the two traitors currently in the room acted rapidly. At the left workstation, a standard office computer standing on a standard office desk, the middle-aged woman rapidly entered the commands to wipe the data storage. At the other desk, a man in his mid-twenties had panic in his eyes as he typed out a message to the network of listening posts this one was but a part of. He thought of omitting the Dangorod main station so that whoever compromised it was not warned. The message was short and to the point: ?Dangorod main likely compromised. Dangorod secondary initiating data wipe and retreat.¡°


    He sent the message through the encryption pipeline and out into hyperspace. Doing so had a high probability of revealing their position, as all hyperspace senders on Dangorod had to be registered and theirs wasn¡¯t. The necessary technology and power demands limited them to large corporations and a few very wealthy individuals, so the total number on the planet was less than a hundred. An unknown sender suddenly transmitting was certain to start an investigation.


    Glancing over his shoulder he noticed his companion still busy with erasing as many digital traces as possible, so he sent out a second message, via ground wave. It was directed at their colleagues. It read: ?Station compromised. Disappear.¡°


    He pressed ?send¡° with a slight tremor in his hand. He had known about the security protocol, but after three years on the job had not really expected it to be used, much less by him. He shook himself back to the moment and walked quickly over to the corner with the three lockers. Within a minute, he had dressed and put his personal belongings and some of the small or mobile computer equipment into a large backpack.


    ?You done, Tracy?¡°, he asked the woman, his fear of what would come next bleeding slightly into his tone of voice. She nodded factually: ?Almost. Ten seconds.¡°


    He hesitated for a few seconds about whether he should go or wait. Twice he turned his body towards the door and back into the room. Tracy was more of a co-worker than a friend, but they had spent many hours working next to each other. Finally he decided that anyway ten second were almost over and he could just as well wait. The faint humming of the equipment in the next room faded out as the listening post shut down. It was far above his understanding of communications technology, which had always bothered him slightly.


    Tracy jumped out of her seat and took the small computer with her as he sprinted across the room, without unplugging it first. Cables snapped and the locker door clattered as she threw it open. In just a few seconds she had shoveled her personal items into a bag, stuffed the computer in with them and half donned her coat. She walked over to the exit while dressing.


    For the last time, the two left the listening post.

 Burn

    The shuttle was approaching rapidly. Twitch turned his head every few seconds to scan the distance, while his fingers danced over the console to ready the Grimalkin for manual launch. On the Rusty Bolt, he could use the flight controls without ever looking at them, and he was getting used to the different layout of the Grimalkin, but he was not yet as fast or sure.


    Next to him, Red was on the comms. She had headphones in her ears, both to keep her conversation out of the bridge talk between Twitch and Grubs and so that the hypercardioid microphone would pick up only her voice and not transmit anything else from their ship to the tower.


    ?What do you mean¡°, the traffic controller was saying, ?medical emergency? You have no clearance for take-off. I repeat, no clearance.¡°


    Twitch gritted his teeth. He screen estimated the shuttle arriving in less than one minute now. Which meant that within half that time it would be close enough to be caught in the blast-off turbulences. Not only had he no personal intention to cause anyone harm, it would also further complicate matters if something happened.


    Grubs slammed the final button on the engineering side of the sequence. He didn¡¯t say anything. He didn¡¯t have to. Loudly slamming the last button had been an unwritten code between them for years.


    ?Well, you see¡°, Red was saying into the microphone, ?the thing about emergencies is that we don¡¯t really care about your clearance. Just make sure the trajectory we¡¯ve sent over is clear of anything that wouldn¡¯t welcome us slamming into them, will you?¡°


    For the past three minutes, it had been her job to keep the tower busy and distracted. Firing up the engines of a spaceship was not something that could be done without detection. Grubs had changed the usual startup sequence as much as possible to ensure a late detection, but the last few minutes before launch were impossible to hide.


    ?Even if¡°, the tower was responding to Red, ?I could approve your launch, I would not approve the trajectory you have given me. That¡¯s a direct ascend that takes you over densely populated areas.¡°


    Red glanced over to Twitch and saw the display in front of him switching from red to green on one system after the other. Two more to go. Seconds until he would fire up the engines. Her second glance was to the screen showing the shuttle approaching. It worried her much more than the tower or even any military ships in orbit. It came straight from the Felindar craft they had seen when they touched down. And the AI had identified it as a Felindar shuttle. It had launched shortly after their launch preparations became obvious. Had they run an ordinary launch sequence, it would have plenty of time to reach them. But as it was¡­ her thoughts were interrupted by Twitch firing up the launch thrusters. The Grimalkin shuddered and roared. The voice in her headphones became even more urgent: ?You have no clearance to launch. Shut down your engines immediately!¡°


    She smiled despite the link to the tower being audio only. ?As I said, we don¡¯t much care. Bye.¡° And Red switched off the comm link. Her task was complete. The tower had hesitated with any grounding measures until they were already lifting off.


    Twitch pushed the power control forward and the Grimalkin jumped up from the landing pad, the sudden acceleration pressing the crew into their seats. Like most ships designed for planetary landings, its decks were stacked vertically and down actually was down. The inertia dampers would activate in a few moments, once they were clear of any ground structures. As they did, perceived gravity returned to normal, and Twitch pushed the power to full. The ship accelerated rapidly straight up into the evening sky.


    The Felindar shuttle had been still outside the area blasted with superheated exhaust, so no harm done. ?Good work, boys.¡°, Red acknowledged. The Grimalkin was rapidly ascending and would cross low orbit in less than one minute. Ten minutes after that, geostationary orbit. And a few minutes later they would be far enough out of the gravity well to jump into hyperspace.


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    The city was falling away behind them, its lights set against an almost dark ground. The sun was coming back up over the horizon from their perspective, but down there it was early night.


    Down there, the Felindar shuttle was now well outside visual range, even with optical enhancements. But Twitch had set sensors to track it. Red could see the shuttle turning around and flying back to the Felindar space ship. They had made it. Their velocity was still climbing fast and the trajectory Twitch had calculated made it near impossible for any military ship to disable them in a way that would allow a boarding operation.


    The metallic roar of the engines had changed tune a few seconds after launch, as they had reached supersonic speeds. It was still roaring underneath them, but the sound could not reach them through the surrounding air anymore. Only the vibrations and sound transported through the ship structure remained.


    Somewhere a sound let the crew know that traffic control was hailing them, but they did as Red had told the controller and ignored it. Forty seconds after blasting off, they crossed the K¨¢rm¨¢n line. They were out of Erulas¡¯ atmosphere, heading towards the stars, towards space and towards Binary Bloom. Red breathed a sigh of relief.


    Six minutes passed, with the Grimalkin accelerating away, the planet getting smaller underneath. The sensors were scanning the nearby space, blue dots on the holographic display indicating other ships. None of them were close enough to their planned route for a clean interception.


    ?What the?¡° Twitch suddenly exclaimed and turned his attention to the map. The sensors had detected a ship launching from the same spaceport they had just left, and the computer was showing a projected trajectory identical to their own. Twitch typed a few commands to restart the calculations, his fingers flying over the console and his foot tapping nervously. His eyebrows went up as he saw the numbers, and the other two following his finger pointing at one in particular. It was labeled ?estimated acceleration¡° and the number was 62g. Almost four times theirs.As human ships went, the Grimalkin was a pretty fast one - and yet, according to the computer, this new ship would catch up with them in just over one minute.


    The crew looked at each other. ?Felindar ship?¡°, Red croaked, her voice breaking at the surprise development.


    Grubs sent the sensor data through an analysis routine. Twitch focussed on piloting, they were within the region that satellites and space stations occupied. His pre-calculated trajectory was done to avoid even getting near one, but better safe than sorry.


    Red swallowed and cleared her throat. ?Can¡¯t be.¡°, she said, ?They¡¯re more advanced than us, but launch speeds are not that different among the races of the galaxy.¡°


    ?The ones we know well enough.¡°, Grubs corrected her, ?The AI says this is a Xylar ship. Fighter or shuttle. Size of a truck. Point of origin is the Felindar ship.¡°


    Red turned to her pilot: ?Twitch, can we escape into hyperspace?¡°


    He shook his head: ?Not for at least three more minutes.¡°


    ?It¡¯ll be here in one.¡°, Red stated what the AI was showing, ?Get us into hyperspace as soon as it¡¯ll not rip the ship into pieces.¡°


    Behind them, the Xylar ship approached, covering the distance at an impossible speed. It had hit the sound barrier less than a second after launch, and left the atmosphere within 20 seconds. Closer and closer, and they could do nothing. With the acceleration the other ship had demonstrated, it would laugh about any evasive maneuvers they could try.


    Red was combing her hair with her fingers. She looked at the map, then at the hyperspace calculations the AI had started, then back at the map. Twitch was right, there was no way they would be able to jump before the Xylars reached them. But if they had enough speed, they might make it before the aliens could board them.


    The Xylar ship came close and passed them less than a kilometer away. As it did, something glowed bright blue at its side and shot towards the Grimalkin. Red closed her eyes. It was a fitting end, shot down by the aliens she had plundered so often.


    Sirens blared and the ship shook as if it had been hit by a hammer. Then a loud whirring sound that quickly dissipated. The ship AI had shut down the engines. But the ship was still in one piece. No damage reports appearing on screen, either.


    Twitch scanned the displays. Then a mixture of fascination and fear took hold of his face. ?I didn¡¯t know they could do that. Didn¡¯t know anyone could do that.¡°, he said slowly. He pointed to the ship status screen. They were in hyperspace. Without having jumped. The Xylar ship had dragged them into hyperspace as it passed, and was pulling them along still.

 Planetside

    Two now defunct shops near Binary Bloom¡¯s docking bay had been transformed into registration centers for the evacuation transports. There were queues in front of both of them.


    The first, set in a convenience store that had catered to those visiting or leaving the station, had a hand-painted sign that said: ?permanent evac to planets¡°. It had the shorter queue. On the inside, three counters were set up, one for each of the Junkstorm planets. More hand-written signs were hanging on the walls leading into the shop, containing information for those interested. A man was walking up and down the queue every ten minutes or so, telling people that until an agreement with the planetary government was in place, only those with citizenship or resident permits for their chosen destination could be accepted.


    Diagonally across, the office of a small travel agency had been turned into, as the similarly makeshift sign above the entrance read, the registration office for ?temporary Aethel evac¡°. Its queue was more than twice as long. A woman was giving out leaflets at the end of the queue and collecting them again from the front with a list of professions. Above the list it explained that only those with one of the listed professions could be accepted in the first wave. About half of the people left the queue after reading the leaflet.


    Nearby, a hallway branched off the main corridor, leading to the administration center of Binary Bloom. It was deserted and appeared empty, but behind the third door on the left, the large meeting room, nearly twenty people were in the middle of a heated argument.


    In the middle of the room, a holographic globe of the planet was annotated with several locations and their base data. Around it, groups of four or five were discussing the merits and drawbacks of the various options. In reality, the discussion had moved away from one about location and returned to the questions of if and how.


    ?So¡°, the representative of the engineers guild said to a gentlemen in his group, ?none of the options suit you, but you can¡¯t offer a new alternative, either.¡°


    ?I¡¯m not a colonization expert.¡°, the man shot back, ?But I can see the obvious risks we are taking here. It is vital for our people that we consider everything before sending them somewhere that might turn into their grave.¡°


    In the group next to them, the discussion had moved to an entirely different question. ?And I still think it is wrong to call it ?temporary¡®.¡°, a young woman with the traders¡¯ guild remarked, ?Even in the best case it will be years before Bloom is ready for a return. If ever. We are giving people false hope!¡°


    In front of the video wall that was currently switched off, a group of guild leaders had gathered around Nicodemus Hallows, governor of Binary Bloom and currently juggling the plethora of tasks, requests, demands and decisions falling upon him. The group around him was discussing the logistics of a planet-side settlement and rebuilding of the station. Tablets with tables or sketches were shown around.


    Someone said: ?Once the lower decks are shut down and sealed off, we can take the radiation shielding from there and move it to the surface. The underside of Bloom receives the least amount, the floors and structure in-between should do.¡°


    ?But will that be enough?¡°, someone else said, ?If the queues are an indication, two thirds of our population prefers Aethel.¡°


    Nico was listening to the words spoken, but his attention was on the non-verbal communication between the people in his group. There was doubt about the practicality of the plan to retreat to the planet below temporarily and rebuild Bloom. But the supporters were still a strong majority. He was a minority. The tablet in his hands showed the projection of this undertaking, and clearly demonstrated that there were not enough resources, no sustainable revenue stream, no reliable timeline to return, nothing that would support the idea that people were likely to return to the station in a reasonable time.


    This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.He flipped the page to look at the settlement estimate. This was the part that worried him most. He spoke up: ?I¡¯ve shown you my projections and you didn¡¯t believe me. If we want to settle a few thousand people on Aethel, we will need most of the radiation shielding from Bloom. The planet¡¯s magnetic field is too weak for life above simple plants and micro-organisms to survive for long. Radiation will poison, then kill, our people. I won¡¯t let anyone fly off that way without a viable plan.¡°


    The fifth group was sitting at the meeting table, huddled around a computer. Comprised mostly of engineers, they were evaluating scenarios of dismantling and rebuilding Bloom, setting up and enlarging a colony on the planet, and shipping the necessary parts and materials up and down. So far, their findings were proving Nico right. None of their scenarios came even close to the target numbers they had set.


    ?If the damn sun were more like sol, it could work.¡°, one of them said, staring at the stellar activity chart. Aethel¡¯s sun was not like sol. It was considerably more active, especially regarding hard radiation.


    The group discussions continued for another half hour before Nico called the assembly to order and everyone returned to their seats.


    ?We agreed¡°, he began, ?to discuss the option of a temporary settlement on the surface, with Binary Bloom serving as a space dock for ships unable to land in a planet. Our best solution so far allows at most a thousand people on the surface and a few hundred on Bloom. At most. Has anyone come up with improvements that change any of that?¡°


    One by one, groups and individuals presented their results, ideas and judgements. The engineering group had found a clever way to keep more of Bloom running with only a minor strain on resources. The leadership group had decided on a quota system and had an economically viable solution to supply a small colony until it was self-sustaining. Just two members of the assembly suggested scrapping the plan. Everyone wanted to keep Bloom operational, one way or the other.


    Nico sighed. He had the same desire, but everything he had seen so far convinced him that they at best delayed the unavoidable. He was exhausted and emotionally drained.


    ?Any closing statements before we have a vote?¡°, he asked the table. Nobody had any.


    ?From what I¡¯ve heard, we have three proposals. One, we abandon Binary Bloom entirely and focus on getting everyone off the station quickly and safely. Two, we shut down 90% of Bloom, keep the space dock around with a crew of about two hundred and move a thousand people to the surface. We attempt to rebuild Bloom and move people back as it becomes possible to do so. Third, partial shutdown of Binary Bloom, keeping a thousand people on board and as many as want to moving to the planet with a concerted effort to solve all the resources and logistics issues as we go along.¡°


    Nico looked around the room, giving everyone the opportunity to add another option. It seemed he had covered it all, because nobody did.


    ?Right¡°, he concluded, ?Let¡¯s vote. All in favor of option one, raise your hands.¡° He wanted so much to raise his own hand, but had decided to abstain. It was his job to implement whatever the assembly decided, and since there was little hope for his choice to be the majority, raising his hand would only make some doubt that he would see whatever they decided through.


    To his surprise, three hands were raised. Not many, but more than he had expected.


    ?Three¡°, he summed up, waiting a second if anyone else changed their mind and joined in. It remained at three.


    ?Everyone in favor of option two, raise your hands now.¡°


    Nine hands raised. Then another, then one more, hesitatingly. Eleven. That was it. There were only seven people who had not cast a vote yet.


    Nico gave everyone closure: ?Check, everyone in favor of option three, raise hands.¡°


    Five hands were raised. Aside from himself, the head of the agriculture guild had abstained.


    The faces around the room showed relief. The difficulty of the decision was written into them, and fell away now. Someone started to clap and a moment later the room applauded itself.


    Raising both his arms, Nico called for silence. ?Everyone, we have a decision. I¡¯ll put it into writing and send it around for corrections, then we will distribute it to the station. Who will go to the registration desk so people know as soon as possible that spots for the planetary settlement will be limited?¡°

 Scramble

    The window exploded in a shower of glass shards, raining down towards the street below. Someone jumped out of it. In the darkness and against the brightly lit room behind, no features of the person could be seen. Moments after the jump, the escape kit opened, a simplified parachute designed for fires or other emergencies.


    There was a fire. But it started in earnest only a minute later, just before the jumper landed on a rooftop one street away.


    The door to the office burst open and four policemen stormed into the room, weapons drawn and ready. They found a scene of devastation. The fire, now raging, added its eerie orange glow to the white ceiling lights and had begun to fill the room with smoke. It became hotter by the second and the smell of burnt plastic and fabric filled the air.


    One of the policemen found and hit the fire alarm switch. Nothing happened. The sprinkler system, clearly visible in the suspended ceiling, had not activated, either.


    Another men stepped forward as much as the heat allowed, in order to get a good look at what the fire was quickly destroying. Office furniture, computer equipment, folder cabinets. Behind the fire, a door into another room was barely visible, and unreachable.


    The third officer, a female sergeant, checked the window and spotted the landing fugitive across the street. A curse left her lips, half-finished. She ran back to the entrance to escape the heat and pulled up her communicator.


    Outside in the hallway, another team was trying to break down the next door. It had clearly been reinforced and led to the room behind the door covered by flames. The room where the fire had been started. The door resisted their efforts, successfully so far. A thin sheet of smoke billowed through the slit underneath it.


    ?Suspect escaped to rooftop across the street. Anyone nearby?¡°


    Nobody answered for a few seconds, then a voice came through: ?Negative. We are on our way up and everyone else is with you.¡°


    The sergeant cursed and looked around. To her right, the second team had just broken through the door, and immediately retreated from the heat of the flames licking out through the doorway. So that room was on fire as well. It was late evening, so all the offices on this floor were closed and locked.


    Her shoulders slumped. By now, even if she quickly found another escape kit to follow, the suspect would have disappeared into the night.


    She walked through the glass door that separated this office from the lobby. Behind her, the other officers had pressed the fire alarm and grabbed portable fire extinguishers to contain the flames. With the flames raging as they did, they would not be able to put them out or save whatever was in those two rooms.


    Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.She contacted the command center: ?One suspect escaped out the window, the fire is out of control. Not likely we will be able to salvage much.¡°


    ?Copy that¡°, command responded, ?Stay on scene and see what you can find out.¡°


    The police command center was a large room with fifteen multi-screen desks, each coordinating one or more teams. It provided drone and camera footage or additional intelligence as support for their operations and bundled police activities throughout the city.


    The operator at desk number six closed the connection and dialed the planetary police HQ. This mission had come from the very top, and he needed to report the failure up without delay. There was an immediate answer, HQ had been standing by as well. ?Suspect started a fire and escaped. Unclear how much we will be able to salvage.¡°


    ?Understood.¡°


    At the police headquarters, the call had been received in a meeting room. The chief of police and the minister of interior were present, as well as various staff members. The room had fallen silent upon hearing these news.


    ?They knew we were unto them.¡°, the chief of police concluded, ?Unclear how they knew. We¡¯ve kept this operation top secret. Even the teams on the ground don¡¯t know what they are after.¡°


    ?And this was our only lead?¡°, the minister asked. His name was Warley Bolden.


    ?Yes. The only cell that we have been able to identify and observe. We sent three teams when the leader of the cell loaded his car full of cans of gasoline and drove off in a hurry. I think we can safely assume that was him jumping out the window. Don¡¯t know how he knew about the police following him.¡°


    Minister Bolden nodded. ?The president will be unhappy about this. I¡¯ll keep all space ships grounded. They will be trying to escape off planet. I would if I were them.¡°


    He turned to the side and contacted the space administration. Moments later, he asked ?repeat that.¡° and then ?are you sure?¡°


    Bolden turned back to the rest of the people in the room: ?We might already be too late. Half an hour ago, a ship made an unauthorized launch from the capital. It escaped into hyperspace before interceptors could reach it.¡°


    Silence followed.


    ?Might just be the local cell there? Who knows how many they have.¡°


    Bolden nodded slowly. Then his hands grabbed the arm rests of his chair and calmly pushed him out. ?I will inform Vance¡°, he said.


    Two minutes later, Bolden had Amara Vance on the line. She was in the back of the presidential limousine, on her way home after a long day of work. The back was spacious, big enough for a small meeting or working on the way, as she often did. The smell off fresh mango hang in the air, the one daily luxury she allowed herself.


    Amara listened to the news from her minister and was, as he had predicted, not happy about them. She ordered the limousine to turn around. The one-time-pads were at her offices, and the only way to securely contact the other planets. Dangorod at least, the courier ship to Dephyr would still be on its way.


    Something had tipped the traitors off and they were scrambling and escaping. She felt that the night would be long, but important.


    Back at the police headquarters, better news had just appeared: ?Our investigation team has identified the company renting these offices and tracked down its registered employees. Two of them are being brought in for questioning as we speak.¡°, the chief of police let everyone know.


    ?What about the company itself?¡°, Bolden asked.


    ?Unclear. It has a complex ownership structure that my people are trying to unravel. Holding companies, investors, joint-ventures. We¡¯ll get to it but it will take a few hours.¡°

 Structure

    Norman Jones was sitting at his desk without a visible emotion. His office was a statement in minimalist design. No decorations adorned its walls, no flowers or plants interrupted the straight lines of its walls. It had no windows. As the head of an intelligence organization, Jones knew the options for eavesdropping and was humble enough to understand that there were likely some he was not aware of. So his office, and all the sensitive parts of his headquarter, was underground. Even the air had a distinctive absence of smells.


    Jones knew of the effect his office had on visitors. He compounded it with stretches of silence just a hint longer than they should be.


    ?Troubling news.¡°, he said.


    General Tebbs was sitting in the visitor chair strategically placed right in the center of the office. He was one of the few people who seemed to be largely immune to the multi-layered games of psychology played.


    ?Moreover¡°, Jones continued, ?we must assume that the entire enemy organization has been warned and vanished.¡°


    ?Erulas has grounded all ships for now.¡°, Tebbs let the intelligence chief know, though he probably knew already.


    ?Not something they can keep up for more than a few days.¡°, Jones remarked.


    Unknown to them, one floor higher and a few corridors away, two prisoners were being interrogated. Agent Ayres was getting impatient, but he had left the process to experts. Of course he had interrogation training himself, but not as in-depth as them, and not with as much real-life experience.


    ?We know you¡¯ve been spying on us.¡°, one of the interrogators said as Ayres watched on from behind the wall. Inside the room, the wall would appear a dark grey as long as he kept the lights in the observation room off. ?And soon we will have all the details from the computer systems we confiscated.¡°, the interrogator continued, ?If you talk now, you will save us some time and effort and we will take that into account when it comes to the military tribunal for treason you are facing.¡°


    A similar message was given, separately, in the other room to the other prisoner. Neither of them seemed to be breaking soon. Neither Ayres nor the interrogators had expected them to.


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    But Agent Ayres had been in the business long enough to understand that they were not working alone. These two were the small fish. He needed to get the head of the operation, or at least a good lead.


    Not-Smith had given him some useful intelligence, but he needed confirmation from another source before betting his career on it. For Ayres, it was vital that the two prisoners broke down and gave him something.


    He got a text message and pulled out his tablet, folding it open. The team he sent to search the homes of the prisoners had come up with nothing.


    Minutes stretched into hours. The prisoner¡¯s resistance was slowly being eroded away, but it took forever. They behaved in the way that people who are waiting for a rescue they are sure will come do. Ayres silently applauded himself for keeping this operation off the books. If their lawyers or inside friends were looking for them, they would hit a wall.


    As morning dawned somewhere above on the surface, the long night ended with a minor success. The team tasked with analyzing the equipment and computers they had found came back with a first result. With tired eyes, Ayres scanned the preliminary report. Definitely equipment suitable for interception of hyperspace messages. Some alien tech. Some decrypted messages and a large amount of encrypted storage. Not-Smith had been truthful, they definitely were intercepting messages from the intelligence headquarters.


    The team was still tracing the equipment to figure out who bought it. Ayres would wait for those results and then get his reward. He needed a few hours of sleep first.


    Norman Jones had taken a short rest and returned to his office early in the morning, significantly before standard office times. Not unusual for him to get out of office after dark or return before sunrise. In the winter months, he could spend a week without seeing the sun.


    He had reports from counter-intelligence units on his secure tablet and skimmed them. A number of suspects had been cleared, at least of this particular crime. Intelligence work was slow and methodical. It would take days, weeks, months to find the traitors.


    The best chance, to him, was the observation of the alien technology markets. If, as was the guess Erulas had communicated, they were paid in alien technology, it had to be sold somewhere. Alien tech does not buy bread or pay rent.


    It did make sense that the Qyrl would pay their collaborators this way. It was easy, required no currency conversion, and offered plausible deniability. With human pirates routinely stealing alien tech and all that.


    His people had identified an initial list of sellers with no obvious source of the items they were selling. They had started investigating them. In a few days he expected the list to be much shorter. As an aside he noticed that none of the fences on the pirate outpost called Binary Bloom were on the list, with a note saying contact with their operative there had been lost for the past day.

 Chat

    ?We can¡¯t get a break, can we?¡°, Montague Tebbs said, occupying the sitting area in his office.


    ?No, we can¡¯t.¡°, the holographic image of Amara Vance replied, ?Any clues what that Qyrl surprise was all about?¡°


    ?I¡¯ll tell you once you let me know what the purpose of the Felindar visit was.¡°


    Amara gave a quick, short laugh: ?I¡¯ll let you know as soon as I found out myself.¡°


    Montague smiled: ?Same here. They came, they shot, they vanished. But your aliens at least spoke to you, so you must have some kind of clue.¡°


    ?It only makes me scratch my head even more.¡°, Amara said, ?They gave us a list of trade items they want. Everything from tech stuff to art. My experts are looking for a pattern.¡°


    ?Well¡°, the general returned to a more official tone, ?Always good chatting with you and keeping this unofficial line open. Hopefully next time we have more to discuss.¡°


    ?See you soon, Montague.¡°, she said, and closed the call.


    The general remained seated. He slowly pulled a folded note out of a pocket in his uniform jacket. It was the actual information exchanged between Erulas and Dangorod. Using one-time-pad encryption. The official channel. One sentence at the end was the hint he had followed calling up Amara on their private line: ?Our president hopes that very soon we can talk to each other like ordinary humans again.¡°


    The meaningless chat was a distraction. If the aliens were indeed listening in, it would have been suspicious to suspend communications. So they kept them up, both officially and unofficially. Telling each other that they were making no progress, while transmitting steganographic information encoded with the one-time-pads.


    Montague was unhappy with the situation and his face showed it. He was doomed to sit on the sidelines and watch. This was Norman Jones¡¯ domain. It was only a matter of time, but while the spies worked their part, his soldiers were out there and could any moment come under attack.


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    He had been sitting for a few minutes, lost in thought, trying to figure out what he could do next. Then, just as he wanted to get up, the communications system informed him of an incoming priority call. On the same line he had just closed. Perplexed, he accepted the call and looked, once again, at the projected face of Amara Vance.


    She seemed excited: ?Montague, it seems we did get a break after all. We just got a message from Binary Bloom, the pirate outpost. Somehow, they got two Qyrl prisoners.¡°


    Montague¡¯s eye widened. His thoughts raced. She was telling him on a channel they knew was eavesdropped on. Which made sense, if she received that intel in the same way, it did not matter, the enemy would already know. But why, why call him immediately to tell it? She needed him to do something. But what?


    He replied: ?Wow, that¡¯s amazing. Did the pirates get any useful info out of them?¡°


    Amara shook her head: ?Not yet, unfortunately. The prisoners are wounded, may not be able to talk. I don¡¯t have the details. It was a short call. The pirates have other problems as well, it seems.¡°


    Now Montague understood. Dangorod was leading in two things within the Junkstorm: Intelligence and medicine. Here was a chance to combine the two.


    ?We have a hospital ship in orbit. It can depart within the hour. Would that help?¡°


    ?Oh yes!¡°, Amara lightened up. Her non-verbal communication told him that this was exactly what she had had in mind. Of course she knew that a military hospital ship in orbit would not need an hour to launch. Ten minutes tops. If it were docked and the crew on a space station, he would have said so. But one hour was enough time to get a couple interrogation experts to the ship.


    Amara continued her part of the game: ?I¡¯ll let my people know that your ship is coming. Two days probably? I hope they can keep them alive that long.¡°


    Montague nodded: ?Two days, give or take a few hours. I¡¯ll tell them to bubble as fast as they can without burning out the engines.¡°


    ?Excellent. I¡¯ve got to hurry. Talk to you soon.¡°, she said and ended the call.


    A few minutes later, General Montague Tebbs was on his way to the intelligence headquarters once more. On the way out, he took one of his aides to the side: ?We have a hospital ship in orbit, the Defiant if I remember correctly. Take a fast transport up there immediately. I will call you in fifteen minutes. It is important that when I make the call, I am told that it will take about an hour to get ready and launch. There will be another transport arriving within that time, intelligence agents. I don¡¯t yet know how many. None of that must be spoken during the call, understood?¡°


    ?Yes, Sir!¡°


    Montague turned around and rushed to his waiting shuttle. This time, he would be flying over using the emergency corridors, lights flashing and priority commands sent ahead of him for any intersections. Half an hour at most until he arrived. It was a tight schedule. Jones would have no time to call in any agents, whoever went to the pirate outpost would have to be at the HQ already.

 Boarding

    The three of them were still taking in the fact that they had been pulled into hyperspace, when the proximity sensors gave them the next surprise. Twitch had just started a sentence with ?Well, we really shouldn¡¯t be surprised by that¡° when the ding-ding of the sensors interrupted him. He glanced over to the screen and froze.


    ?You¡¯ve got to be¡­ seriously?¡°, he exclaimed and pointed towards the image on the screen that the computer had constructed from the sensor data. It showed the Grimalkin and not far away the outline of the Xylar ship that had pursued them.


    It also showed three dots moving from the Xylar ship towards them. They were blinking in and out of existence as they did so. Twitch turned and entered commands into the console.


    ?Some kind of weapon?¡°, Grubs wondered, looking at the same screen.


    ?Don¡¯t know.¡°, Twitch stated, ?We have limited sensor capabilities in hyperspace. I¡¯m trying to narrow it down.¡°


    Red leaned over and tilted her head. She studied the image for a few seconds and then, with surprising calm, said: ?My bet is on a boarding team.¡°


    ?Nonsense.¡°, Twitch said, still working on the data analysis, ?Hyperspace would kill anyone, human or alien, in seconds. Even autonomous drones would be ripped to shreds.¡°


    ?Unless¡°, Red added, ?they are inside a warp bubble. And these aliens seem to have extended their ship¡¯s warp bubble to include us. Aren¡¯t they following the channel between the ships that we saw for a second before they force-jumped us?¡°


    Twitch emphatically shook his head: ?Even inside a warp bubble, leaving the ship is suicide.¡°


    Grubs had been studying the display. Now he intervened: ?Red is right, Twitch. The Xylars are seven-dim creatures. Hyperspace for them is like jumping into a lake for us. Not our natural environment, but with a bit of swim training it¡¯s no big deal.¡°


    They all stared at the screen. Twitch¡¯s voice broke and he had to start again, telling the others the data analysis results: ?Movement speed and size are in line with what we would expect if this were a boarding party.¡°


    ?Right¡°, Red said after a long moment of silence, ?Impossible acceleration, hyperspace capability in a tiny ship, hyperspace dragging, nothing should surprise us anymore. Humans rarely had contact with the Xylars after they brought us faster-than-light technology. It¡¯s not like we had any idea what they are or aren¡¯t capable of.¡°


    ?Very reassuring.¡°, Twitch said flatly.


    ?I guess¡°, Grubs remarked, ?repelling boarders is not a sensible move?¡°


    Nobody answered the rhetorical question.


    The seconds ticked away as the dots closed the distance. Just shy of a minute was the total estimated time, half of that remained. Silently, the three armed themselves. Not that they expected it to make a difference, but there was nothing else to do and it made them feel better.


    The dots reached the Grimalkin. The sensors lost track of them. Twitch pressed a button to open the outer airlock. He shrugged: ?Better than them burning a hole into the hull, right?¡°


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    The Xylars had the courtesy of taking the airlock, one at a time. A few moments later, they reached the bridge. None of the crew had seen a Xylar before, though there were sketches in school books. They were surprisingly humanoid. Tall and slender, with smooth, iridescent skin that shimmered with an otherworldly sheen. Their eyes, however, were large and multifaceted. According to the books they could see a much wider spectrum of light than the human eye. But the most striking feature was a pair of additional arm-like limbs on their backs, behind the shoulder-blades, pulsing with faint bioluminescence and twitching in and out of 3D space.


    According to the old school books, what they were looking at was a 3D slice of the true Xylars. Like a face as the visible part of a person during a video call.


    ?Humans¡°, the Xylar closest to them said. Actually, he was speaking in waves in the fifth dimension, with properties of both light and sound, closer in nature to telepathy than talking. But a translator held in his hands converted it into human speech. And of course ?he¡® was an assumption. The school books said nothing about genders in the Xylars race.


    ?You have stolen from us. We come to take back what is ours.¡°


    Red realized the translation was an approximation. The true words were most likely not translatable to human language. She stepped forward: ?I¡¯m the captain of this ship. Yes, we have what is yours. We will not resist if you¡­¡° a sudden jerk threw her off balance and interrupted her. There was also a sudden change that dazed her and made her feel more than understand what just happened.


    The signal tone and the change in the ship machinery¡¯s audible background confirmed it. They had suddenly and violently returned to normal space.


    Red grabbed a railing and held herself steady, trying not to fall while she was getting back her senses. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Twitch frantically typing on the console, while simultaneously shaking off the transition effect. She looked over towards the Xylars. They seemed to be less affected by the dimension jump, and were just standing there, unmoving.


    ?Someone¡°, Twitch started, his voice all over the place, ?grabbed us with dimensional shears.¡°


    The holographic map of nearby space flickered to life. It showed the Grimalkin in the center, and a larger ship nearby.


    ?Military¡°, Twitch interpreted the sensor data.


    Red smiled faintly. They had run into an Erulas interceptor, apparently. Even if the Xylars realized within seconds what had happened, they would be millions of klicks away. Hundreds of millions if they had to think before making a decision.


    Then she remembered that they were still deep within the Junkstorm. The Xylars were suffering its ill effects every moment they were there. Coming to Erulas in the first place must have put them through hell already.


    Her smile broadened. They might not be as outclassed as she had thought.


    She looked over to the map. Then she turned to the Xylars: ?I reckon we have less than five minutes before combat bots or soldiers join us. None of us here wants that. How about we come to an agreement beneficial for all of us?¡°


    The Xylars did not immediately respond. Red was unsure if they had not understood, the translation took time, or if they were discussing with each other.


    ?Look¡°, she continued, ?I know both we and the military out there would take heavy losses trying to fight you. But given the size of your craft, there are at most what, two more of you? And if it comes to that, we just might take you down with us. Again, none of us want to test that, right?¡°


    The answer came almost instantly: ?Your argument is logical. A peaceful solution is preferable. We have stated our objective. State yours.¡°


    ?Wow¡°, Red thought, ?aren¡¯t we all warm and fuzzy.¡° She was confused by the dissonance between the words the Xylars had spoken, which if she had read them somewhere her inner voice would have taken on a robotic tone, and the friendly, warm and almost melodic voice the translation device had used.


    Out loud she said something different: ?Information. One, What is so special about this hyper core? You lot don¡¯t usually care much when, er, pirates steal one of them. And two, what is the deal with you and the Felindar?¡°

 Clues

    Agent Ayres had expected a different reaction. After hours of intense interrogation, one of the suspects had agreed to talk in exchange for a reduced sentence. The rescue he seemed to have waited for had not appeared and his hope had dwindled. So he finally gave in.


    With two confessions and the lab results in hand, Ayres had gone to his superior officer. Who had congratulated him and, probably eying a promotion for himself as well, they wrote a summary for his superior and requested a meeting to discuss the next steps. Ayres made sure that the summary included all the juicy bits - alien technology, long-term interception dating back years, decrypted classified material.


    Just over an hour later, they were called upstairs. Agent Acadia Beynon was one level underneath intelligence chief Jones. She was in equal parts respected and feared. Known for being strict, ruthless, but also supportive of anyone showing talent or success, they were let through right into her office by the secretary.


    And as soon as they were through the door, she asked: ?Who of you deemed this a clandestine op?¡°


    Edric Ayres had been thrown to the wolves by his superior before he even had a chance to open his mouth. The man did it without words, just with a sideway look that contained an entire book of accusations, as if he had brought Edric here not to support his actions but to disavow them.


    But Edric was a field agent. He was used to thinking on the spot and pivoting quickly if need be. And since Agent Beynon had the same history, they shared an understanding of the world that bureaucrats like his boss did not have. At least he hoped so.


    ?At the time¡°, he explained, ?it appeared prudent to do so. I understand from your reaction that I was lacking information that would have changed that assessment?¡°


    She looked him straight in the eye. ?Do you have a security clearance higher than mine?¡°, she asked with in a sharp tone.


    ?No, Ma¡¯am¡°, Edric responded.


    ?Then on what grounds did you decide this should be kept from your superiors?¡°


    Edric took a deep breath. He had been trained not to stammer when confused or lost for words. He used the two seconds he had bought to sort his thoughts, evaluate and discard different things he could say. He finally settled on: ?I was not sure if it was not a hoax. As soon as I was certain, I reported it. That is why we are here now.¡°


    Agent Beynon looked him up and down. She did not seem to relax. But she said: ?We will see. I read your summary. Aside from the facts, what do you think you discovered, Agent Ayres?¡°


    ?As I said in my report, a cell of enemy agents spying on our HQ.¡°, Edric said.


    ?And¡°, she continued questioning him, ?do you think they worked alone?¡°


    ?No, Ma¡¯am¡°, he answered, ?I have a lead on the head of the operation.¡°


    Again, she let the silence hang in the room for a second while she eyeballed him. Then, to his surprise, she turned to his boss: ?Thank you, you are dismissed. I will continue this conversation with your agent myself.¡°


    A turn, a few steps, a door opening and closing and they were alone in the office. It was more spacious than his, but sparsely furnished. There was a sitting area his did no have. No windows, for security reasons. And because they were still underground.


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    ?What you discovered¡°, she continued where she had left off, ?was one of many cells. There was an ongoing investigation to identify these cells. Was, until you alerted the enemy that we are on to them. Now they have gone into hiding. They blew up another of their listening posts just before we could raid it. All others have certainly gone dark. Whatever you have, it better get our operation back on track.¡°


    Edric tried to hide it, but he breathed a sigh of relief. He could still save his career. And so he sat down with Agent Beynon and went over the interrogation protocols, the fact sheet his people had prepared and the conclusion he himself had drawn. It took them the better part of an hour. Beynon was impossible to read. He could not figure out if she was pleased or disappointed. She certainly seemed to be genuinely interested in his results, which gave him hope.


    When they were finished, she stood up without a word and walked over to the door of her office, leaned out and said something to her secretary that Edric couldn¡¯t make out. She came back, her leather shoes making only the faintest of sounds on the carpeted office floor. She sat down again and waited. She didn¡¯t fidget with a pen or browser her messages, she simply waited.


    Minutes passed. Edric was not sure if he was dismissed, but she had not said anything.


    Six or seven minutes into this uncomfortable wait, the door suddenly opened and another senior officer entered. Edric had seen him before but could not quite place him.


    ?Acadia¡°, he greeted Agent Beynon by first name, ?I came as soon as I could.¡°, and with a sideway glance towards Edric, he continued: ?Clearance?¡°


    ?He knows enough, and we don¡¯t have time for that.¡°, she replied. Then, as the newcomer was taking a seat, she quickly summed up the past hour. At the end, she dropped a name: Mervin. Yes, it did ring a bell. Then Edric remembered: Melvin Knightley, the right hand of Norman Jones himself. Former military, special ops.


    Knightley turned to Edric: ?Your prisoners made no mention of an alien connection, Agent Ayres?¡°


    ?No, Sir.¡°, Edric replied. What was the man getting at?


    Knightley looked at him the way a fighter seized up his opponent before a match. A faint smell of laser burns floated into Edric¡¯s nose. The other man had been at the shooting range when he was called, apparently.


    ?You are now a part of Operation Moonlight. Your little spy cell¡°, Knightley began, ?is part of a Junkstorm-wide, if not wider, conspiracy of human collaborators working for the Qyrl. All our government and we suspect much of our commercial communications have been intercepted, decrypted and analyzed. For at least the last three years, most likely longer.¡°


    Edric became slightly pale. Knightley picked up on it immediately: ?This is the operation your actions have endangered. Three governments working together, trying to hide from the aliens that we are on to them.¡°


    Agent Beynon intervened at that point, leaning slightly forward with a stern expression: ?However, all things considered, Agent Ayres is so far the only part of this operation that actually succeeded in capturing and interrogating few suspects. He has a lead.¡°


    ?Yes¡°, Edric quickly said, ?I have two suspects with matching confessions about whom they are getting orders from. It is a small company registered on Dangorod but a wholly-owned subsidiary of another small company on Dephyr.¡°


    Knightley was nodding approvingly, so Edric continued: ?Both of my suspects claim that they were engaging in industrial espionage.¡°


    ?What?¡°, Knightley wondered, ?Spying on the intelligence HQ?¡°


    ?Yes, I know. It is what the suspects claim. I pressed them on this very question and they said that their company assumes that the Dangorod intelligence branch is supplying Dangorod companies with intelligence they can use as market advantages. A bit far-fetched but not entirely outlandish. The suspects don¡¯t seem to be the most bright, either. Maybe they were hired because of naivety.¡°


    ?Interesting.¡°, Agent Beynon concluded, ?Melvin, I have the company data here and my people are already creating a dossier on them. A front, certainly. We will need to work with the people on Dephyr to get to the source.¡°


    ?Agreed.¡°, Knightley said, ?Do we already have secure communication with them?¡°


    Beynon shook her head. ?Not yet. We expect to get it within the day.¡°


    Knightley turned to Edric and started getting out of his chair. ?Agent Ayres, I will see your prisoners now.¡°

 Investigation

    One hour later, the hospital ship ?Defiant¡° left the low orbit around Dangorod it had been stationed in for the past week. The ship was a sleek, crescent-shaped meta-metal object the size of a building. It was one of the most modern ships in the Dangorod fleet, having been put into service only four years ago.


    Within the crescent, almost exactly in the middle, both length- and height-wise, was an unusual sight for a space ship: A section of glass windows, three stories high and with that more than half of the height of the entire ship. Behind the windows was a park, green grass, bushes and trees. A small stream was running alongside one of the paths winding their way through it, ending in a small pond complete with a handful of ducks.


    The park served a purpose, of course. Patients would come here to relax, and both being in nature and being able to see outside were factors known to speed up recovery and support the mental health especially of long-term patients.


    The two wings of the crescent were the patient wards on one side and the crew and guest quarters on the other. Several operating theaters were housed in the thick middle section, as well as the bridge, engineering and kitchens. There was also a small sports center for both crew and patients.


    Now the ship set course for the pirate outpost called Binary Bloom. It would take them a bit over two days to reach it.


    Meanwhile, on the planet below, messages were being one-time-pad encrypted to Erulas to exchange the information both sides had learned. A few hours later, Depyhr finally joined the conversation.


    This time, the conversation was mostly text with a few images here and there. The one-time-pad sent out was several Petabytes in size, but if it had been used for a holographic videoconference, it would last only a few hours.


    On Erulas, Amara Vance had a really bad day. The explosion downtown that had destroyed any evidence of the listening post they had hoped to get their hands on was just the beginning. The latest update from Dangorod explained how the traitors had known they were being investigated, and it meant that other listening posts were also shut down and dismantled, probably in a less spectacular fashion.


    And as if all that was not bad enough, no: ?What do you mean escaped?¡°


    ?Madam President¡°, the officer of the orbital patrol said from his holographic image, ?one minute before our interceptor could reach them for boarding, they jumped into hyperspace. We tracked them flying in formation with the Xylar ship they had earlier met up with, leaving the system along a route we had no interceptors stationed. And, if I may add, at a speed we had not expected from their ship.¡°


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    Sibastyan, who was sitting to her right, raised a hand and spoke: ?Given that you had only minutes of warning, intercepting them the first time was already noteworthy. I assume you have ships in pursuit?¡°


    ?Yes, Sir.¡°, the officer confirmed, ?Though they are moving faster than any of our ships. We will not catch up with them, but wherever they go we should get there not long after. They refueled at the space port, but our estimate is that even fully refueled they will barely reach the edge of the Junkstorm.¡°


    ?Wherever they are headed, assume that someone is meeting them.¡°, Amara added.


    After a few more details, they concluded the call and Amara turned to the small group in her office. Aside from Sibastyan as the minister of defense, she had invited Colonel Sato and Krisi Burez, the minister for alien affairs.


    ?So¡°, she summed up, ?human spies working for the Qyrl, and pirates working with the Xylars. The same pirates who allegedly stole the hypercore that started all this. What am I missing?¡°


    Krisi tried first: ?We can only speculate, of course. To me the most reasonable assumption is that they made a deal with the Xylars in the same way we made a deal with the Felindar.¡°


    ?Who¡°, Sato interrupted, ?gave the Xylars a lift here as it seems.¡°


    Krisi nodded and continued: ?None of this makes any sense. I agree, Amara, there¡¯s a central piece of the puzzle we don¡¯t have, yet. How are we on Operation Moonlight?¡°


    ?Gordon has put every available man and woman on the job.¡°, Amara explained, ?And they are tracking down the corporate structures behind the organizations uncovered here, on Dangorod and on Dephyr. Now that Dephyr has a secure line, information is flowing. We have seen the same pattern several times already: Corporate ownerships distributed over all three planets. Some linked even outside the Junkstorm. But we are on it.¡°


    Colonel Sato raised a hand and, after a gesture from Amara, spoke: ?Do we still need the one-time-pad communication if the traitors have shut down their listening posts?¡°


    ?Probably not.¡°, Sibastyan explained, ?But we want to make sure.¡°


    Amara continued: ?Gordon has promised me results by the end of the day. Until then, I think another meeting with the Felindar envoy is in order.¡°

 Memories of Old

    Deep within Binary Bloom, a man whose figure would not make him first choice for such an activity, was crawling through the air ducts. The low hum of the ventilators had stopped three minutes ago, and ever since he had been mumbling ?no, no, no!¡° to himself at irregular intervals.


    Faberto had been buried under the debris of the recent attack, but a steel beam that came down in a lucky blocking position had saved him from serious injury. It had taken him four hours to free himself, and the mixture of confined space, limited air exchange and physical exertion had caused him to lose consciousness a few times, or doze off into semi-consciousness.


    That way, he had apparently missed the evacuation team and had not responded when they shouted if there was anyone else.


    Now, this section of the station was being shut down and would be sealed off soon. Faberto did not know what would happen then. Maybe all the air would be sucked out to conserve it for the rest of the station? He desperately wanted to avoid finding it out, at least from this side.


    By the time he had arrived at the nearest corridor, the bulkhead was already down, and nobody answered to his hammering. So the air ducts it was. He had grabbed a laser cutter on his way and hoped that either the air ducts were not yet sealed, or it would be possible to cut through it. Trying the bulkhead was futile, he knew how sturdy they were.


    His belly was a serious problem now. With it, his body filled out almost the entire cross-section of the air duct, and crawling forward was more difficult than it should have been. Faberto decided to pick up regular visits to the gym again, right after this was all over.


    He turned around another bend, which were the most challenging parts of the journey. He already barely fit into the duct, turns required a lot of squeezing and twisting.


    When he was done, the flashlight he had likewise scavenged on his way illuminated a scene of destruction. This part of the station had been hit by a stray shot. On the plus side, he told himself, this was about where he had expected the air duct seal to be. So it was likely inoperative. On the down side, he had just spent four hours of digging himself out of metal debris and doing that all over again was the last thing he wanted to do right now.


    He pulled on the rope he had tied around his waist and belt. There was a bag at its other end, two meters behind him. It was the only way he could bring the laser cutter along and still have both arms free to crawl.


    He fumbled with the cutter and carefully pulled it up. It was a bit of a struggle to get it between his slightly overweight body and the walls of the air duct, and he was constantly afraid he would set it off and burn a hole in his body, but he managed it and finally, sweating and panting, he had the laser cutter in his hands.


    On his belly, in an awkward position with arms extended and head tilted sideways so he could see what he was doing, he cut away the metal pieces that blocked his way. They fell to the floor below with a loud clattering sound. And a delay much too long for his comfort.


    Faberto grabbed the edge to pull himself forward and immediately regretted it. The metal was sharp and had been torn off unevenly, creating a saw-like edge that cut into his fingers. He yelped and pulled his hands back, checking them for injuries. There was a small cut on his left hand, but nothing serious. So he crawled forward the way he had done for the past subjective eternity, pushing against the floor, walls and ceiling with hands and feet.


    When he reached the edge, the part where the air duct had been torn apart, he looked down into a storage room of some kind, filled with what seemed to him to be spare parts. It was about four meters from floor to ceiling, and the air duct was just underneath the ceiling. Which had partially collapsed into the room, tearing through the air duct and some of the shelves underneath.


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    ?Oh shit¡°, Faberto exclaimed. He started looking for a way to get down. And back up again. He was not past the seal yet, so this room and its one exit door would still lead to the part of the station he was trying to get out of.


    He also noticed that the room was warm. Much warmer than was typical for Binary Bloom. After a moment he felt that from time to time, hot air was coming out of the air duct on the opposite side.


    Finding no easy way down, Faberto got the laser cutter out one more time and sliced off a bit of the edge. It wasn¡¯t perfect, but the cutter made for a smoother edge than the jagged break he had cut himself on. Then he realized that he was head-first in the air duct and definitely would not be able to turn around. His plan had been to grab unto the edge and lower himself down as far as possible, dropping only the final two meters or so.


    The support above him creaked. The metal channel was meant for air, not for heavy humans. Inside the walls, it was well supported, but hanging from the ceiling like here, not so much. He looked around frantically. Finally, he spotted a thin pipe that, if he stretched himself, he could probably reach just before falling out of the air duct. It was his best hope.


    Faberto crawled and pushed himself forward until most of his upper body was in the air. He stretched out his hands and, with a final push, grabbed on to the pipe just as he tipped over and would otherwise have plummeted to the floor below. The pipe was ice cold. Gritting his teeth, he pulled the rest of himself out and swung downwards, one of his knees painfully hitting something on the way down that he had not seen.


    Also, he found that between the icy pipe, the slippery surface condensation had created and his less than optimal ratio of muscle mass to body weight, he really could not hold on as much as he had thought. The pipe slid out of his grip and he fell.


    He crashed down on top of some boxes that fortunately had a considerable amount of packaging material around their contents, which helped soften his fall. It hurt anyways and he felt as if he had torn a muscle in his left leg, but he was mostly ok.


    The same could not be said of the person that had been stuffed into the box. From the looks of it, months ago. Faberto was too dazed from the fall to realize immediately what he had fallen on top of. He grabbed his arm, then elbow, then knee and realized he did not have enough hands to hold everything that hurt.


    Then he saw the body. ?Oh shit!¡°, he exclaimed, loudly this time. He scrambled out of the ruins of the box, thrashing widely until he was well clear of it, hitting his head on a metal shelf.


    He glanced at the body sideways, not wanting to stare at it but unable to just ignore it. Apparently a woman, early 30s he would say, quite attractive. He struggled with his inner monologue, telling himself that ?attractive¡° was not a proper attribution for a corpse.


    He looked around. There was a single door and above the air duct. No other exits. He pulled himself up and tried to open the door. It was locked, but the laser cutter worked its magic once more and soon the door was open. As he had feared, he was right next to the bulkhead, but still on the wrong side.


    He left the door open because it made him feel better, but he turned back to the storage room. He spotted a ladder stowed away in the far corner, behind the shelf and exhaled in relief. ?Some luck for me, finally.¡°, he mumbled to himself.


    He walked over to the corner, keeping as far away from the corpse as possible. To his surprise, the room smelled of dust, but not of rotting flesh. The dead woman was dry, almost mummified. With the pain in his body slowly subsiding, Faberto was now horrified. He avoided looking at the corpse, but out of the corner of his eye spotted a wallet among the debris of the box, right underneath the corpse. Without thinking, he grabbed it, avoiding to touch the dead body.


    Then he pulled out the ladder, set it up and scurried up as quickly as he could. On top, he cut away the edge of the air duct with the laser cutter right at the wall, so that it would support his weight, and groaning and struggling pulled himself up to complete his journey.

 Dead Ends

    ?So, in summary, dead ends everywhere?¡°, Amara said, visibly unhappy.


    The people in the meeting room nodded. She had assembled the intelligence, police and military heads as well as Gordon Fleills, the Minister of External Affairs.


    ?Someone¡°, Gordon explained, ?really knows how to set up a corporate structure. Ownership of the involved companies is spread out and identifiable people reside outside the Junkstorm. We also have a few cases of identity theft, with the people on the paperwork having no idea someone had opened a company in their name. One of the shell companies is owned by a man dead for five years.¡°


    ?All the sites we have discovered so far have since been shut down. Where we found employee records, they were forged or made up. We are now working on the companies renting out these spaces, they might be involved or they might have been duped as well.¡°, the head of police added.


    It was night already, and the day had gone by too quickly. The last light of Erulas¡¯ sun had just disappeared, and dense clouds covered the sky in patches of black and gray. The city below was shining in lights as it always was. In the distance, she knew the Felindar ship was sitting at the spaceport, though she could not see it directly.


    She turned around, away from the window back into the room. This was the third meeting in a row and the air conditioning was barely keeping up pumping fresh air into it. She was exhausted. ?Everyone makes mistakes.¡°, she said, ?Look harder, find the ones our enemy has made.¡°


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    She excused herself and left the room, hurriedly moving to her office. Dr. Chen was waiting for her. The empty cup on the table in front of him indicated that he had been waiting for a while.


    ?Madam president¡°, he said, rising to greet her.


    ?Dr. Chen¡°, she answered, while walking over to her side of the table and sitting down behind her desk, ?I hope that you have something for me, because nobody else has.¡°


    ?Insights more than facts, I¡¯m afraid.¡°, the alien expert said, ?First, the Felindar claim that the ship that launched from their ship was bought from the Xylars, but manned by Felindar. They refused to discuss details. I doubt they were truthful. The Xylars are higher dimensional beings compared to the Felindar. I don¡¯t see how they could even operate a Xylar ship.¡°


    ?Agreed¡°, Amara said plainly, ?Now what do we make of that? For years we are alone in the Junkstorm, and then within a few days three different alien races show up. Does that make sense to you? Even assuming that they are all interested in that pirate loot?¡°


    ?They do seem extraordinarily interested all of a sudden, yes. What are you getting at?¡°


    ?Not sure myself. We are missing something, doctor. I was hoping you had some insight?¡°, Amara said.


    Dr. Chen was not easily made uncomfortable and he stood his ground without flinching: ?Not enough reliable information for guidance at this time. I was talking to the pirate governor, hoping that he could tell me something about his prisoners. He promised to question them more, but it very much seems like it is not a priority for him.¡°


    Amara sighed. ?Thank you, Dr. Chen. Let me know when you have any progress.¡°


    ?Of course.¡°, Dr. Chen said and stood up.


    As he left her office, Amara turned to her computer displays, going over the information they had collected so far. It had been a long day. A long week, in fact. After perusing the dozens of documents once more, she decided that a good night¡¯s sleep would probably be the most productive thing to do for now and shut the computer off.