“Captain Cofey! Shut down your drives and stand down! By order of the Hou Ji Planetary Government!”Lieutenant Kernel called in an authoritative voice.

  Dog-bot and Cat-bot both immediately moved to eviscerate him, but he tapped a button on his glove and two... somethings detonated outside, sending an electrical surge through the corridor, dog-bot, and Cat-bot.

  Dog-bot and Cat-bot both fell to the ground, twitching.

  “You know, I knew President Elect Ivanova was planning something, I had just kindof hoped you regular military folk weren't in on it.” I said over the PA

  “My orders were to protect you with my life... and keep this ship on this planet by any means necessary. Disconnect captain, I don't want to kill you.”Lieutenant Kernel said warily.

  “You won't” I said, just as the armored vehicle impacted the airlock.

  A lot of things happened at once, so of course I dropped into the highest reference frame I could.

  Shrapnel filled the fabrication bay, bisecting Mitch and sending Rekki-Ricky flying into the corridor beyond, which I attempted to seal off from the fabrication bay by means of a pressure door. Which of course chose this moment to throw me an error and a string of override windows.

  Megan was currently on her back fighting off a robot that had reached her, when both were kicked into the air, and she managed to kick off and away from the bot, conveniently putting her and Hwang on one side of a pressure door and the breach on the other. Of course I sealed it, closing pressure doors all around the breach, letting the bots have that part of the ship for now.

  And in the Bridge, Lieutenant Kernel pulled the trigger...

  Just as Carolina popped out of a hatch above the helm and, hanging upside down, aimed the repaired ring weapon that had belonged to her captain at the Lieutenant.

  The image froze in my head, the bullets ripping through my arm, ripping it away from my insensate form, while a beam of blinding light turned the Lieutenant into a withered charcoal husk.

  Down in the Fabrication bay I could see the armored vehicle lodged in the airlock and the fabrication bay unseal it's front hatch, and through it stepped an armored figure.

  I noted that it looked very different from the robots we had faced so far. It was massive, a far cry from the spindly robots we had been fighting, thick armor ringed every part of it, and it had a dome shaped top, opaque but obviously where it would see... The more I thought about it the more I thought it looked like powered armor.

  Bullets pinged off the armored figure, sending it reeling, Rekki-Ricky, laying with a broken arm down in the corridor past the fabrication bay, had braced his weapon on several pieces of wreckage and was sending poorly aimed full auto fire down the bay, suppressing the armored figure and forcing him into the way of what I could already tell was a packed bay full of similar figures in the armored car.

  Numbly I forced my way through all of the override windows, and sealed Rekki-Ricky off from the remains of the armored car.

  It was getting hard to focus.

  At some point I had fallen out of my higher reference frame.

  I switched back to my view of the bridge, and could see Carolina had dropped down from her little hidey hole and was at my side. She was shouting into her data pad, and attempting to tourniquet what was left of my... bicep? There really wasn't much meat left below the shoulder of my right arm.

  I belatedly noted Doctor Smith had grabbed some kind of bag from the medical bay and was heading to the bridge.

  “...fey... Captain Cofey!” Hook's voice penetrated the fog I found myself in.

  “What?” I asked fuzzily. Through the camera I saw my mouth move. That was odd.

  “You are in danger captain, and we must escape. Please give orders to the drones to protect you, and set a course out of this system...” Hook said more stuff, but it didn't really seem that important. Huh, why was Rekki-Ricky glowing?

  I blearily did what Hook suggested, sending my orders directly to dog-bot and cat-bot, and using the very helpful system prompt to set a route to the jump point. I received an error back from Cat-bot and Dog-bot, and sent it on to the other drones.

  Weird, all the message prompts were getting runny around the edges...

  Hehe... runny...running... runtimes...

  My head hurt, it hurt a lot.

  The bridge camera showed that the doctor had made it to me. Had it been that long? And he was doing... something to my arm. They were screaming at me, and Carolina was doing something to the back of my head...

  I blinked, and all of a sudden I was me again, instead of the ship.

  And I hurt.

  Just so much.

  The sudden adrenaline spike from the pain kicked me out of the fugue state I had slipped into and I let out a half gurgled scream.

  “There you are!” Carolina said happily.

  I let out a muffled whine.

  “You'll be okay.” Carolina said as she put her hand on the side of my face.

  “We need to get him to medical!” Doctor smith said.

  He placed something on the ground that extended into what looked like a gurney, and both him and Carolina lowered me onto it.

  “What the hell happened?” Doctor Smith shouted, as he looked down at the charcoaled figure on the ground.

  “Tell you later, save Brayden now.” Carolina said, her voice sterner than I had ever heard her be.

  “Boarders... in the Fab bay.” I managed to grate out.

  And then everything went black.

  ***********************************************************************************

  CAROLINA

  I stepped back as the medical bay door wooshed closed, trapping Brayden in the medical bay with the subordinate of a man who had just tried to kill him. I briefly contemplated killing the rest of those on board the ship, after all their leader had just shot my friend...

  I shook my head. I could always kill them later. Right now the doctor was keeping Brayden alive, and that earned him some respite. For now.

  Right now I had a job to do, deal with the boarders in the fab bay. I turned and started running down the passageways down to the main airlock and the fab. I was just turning the the corridor towards the ladder that lead down below, which Brayden understandably never used with his condition, when the world tilted.

  I may have let out what was absolutely not a scream, and if anyone ever asked about any screams they may or may not have heard or were recorded, I would helpfully inform them it must have been the two girl soldiers around the corner who had until this point been making a heck of a racket with their guns and the robots and the screaming...

  I honestly could see the appeal of the C.O.G. Way of doing things, with only one person on board you don't have to deal with all that.

  Anyway, the ship had gone vertical, changing the wall on which I had been running alongside into the floor, and changing the left turn I was going to take to the ladder into a vertical climb. I could feel my clothes trying ineffectually to apply the magnetic artificial gravity the ship used, but it was powerless against both the gravity of the planet and the acceleration of the ships main drive.

  Though... no reason it couldn't help. I tapped away at the cuff of the suit Brayden had given me and the pull on my suit altered form pullling me into what was the floor to pulling me to my new up. It at least counteracted some of the drives force. I advanced to what was now the shaft leading vertically up and down.

  Oh, hey, one of the girls was peering up from below me right now.

  “What's happening?” The soldier called out. I think her name was... Megan I think? Wang... no that wasn't right, there was an H in there, she was the one with the weird eyebrows and the foul mouth.

  “Brayden's hurt, ship is on auto pilot and we have boarders in the fab bay!” I called back, waving her along with me. She shouted behind her and the other one... The one whose name I couldn't quite pin down, came up beside Megan and looked up at me.

  “How the fuck do we get there?” Hwang, I think, called up.

  “Follow me!” I said, as I started climbing up, using the bumps and weird shaped nodules on the bulkhead as a makeshift ladder.

  It was significantly more difficult than that may seem, because the pull from the gravity and the drive together was not always constant, I am not sure if we were dodging enemy fire, or we were passing through a storm, or the drives were misfiring, but we would suddenly go weightless, then be pulled to the side, then back to full force downwards.

  Still, it did not take long for me to reach the hatch to the ladder. I tugged it open, only to have the hatch fling back and slam into my hand.

  This time I definitely screamed.

  “What happened?” Megan called up.

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “Fucking hatch bit me.” I muttered under my breath.

  “What?”

  “HATCH BIT ME! GOING DOWN!” I motioned with my hand, the pinky and ring fingers swelling up like sausages and dripping blood, and threw myself into the crawlspace beyond the hatch.

  I ignored the ladder that was right now stretching horizontal behind me, and instead crouch walked down the narrow tube the three meters to the next hatch, and attempted to open it.

  I say attempted because it refused to open, and a cursory examination showed that the hatch itself seemed bent inward from impact.

  I sucked my teeth and extended the tools in the suit Brayden had given me.

  I ground the lever on the hatch back as far as it would go and lit up the plasma torch, being thankful for the shield that popped up between me and it on my wrist, keeping me from going blind. I placed the flame up against the edge of the hatch where I could hear the grinding, and leaned into the lever. In the meantime the girls had joined me, raising their hands at first against the flame.

  A few seconds later it gave way, and I tumbled out of the hatch.

  And promptly fell two meters straight down, knocking the wind out of my chest.

  I got up swearing, my left side felt tight, and I was having trouble getting a breath, but I forced myself up and looked around.

  I had fallen from the hatch above due to the orientation of the ship, but it had dumped me right into the corridor leading to the main fab.

  And there, piled just outside the big heavy, and a half sealed bulkhead to the main fab, was a pile of wreckage and body parts.

  One collection of which was not only groaning, but pealed off a burst of gunfire down into the main fab as I watched, though half of it ricocheted uselessly off the pressure door.

  It was the thought that counted. One of my sisters had told me that.

  “Holy shit, are you still alive in there?”I called out, my own injuries forgotten in the surge of adrenaline that had clawed its way into my blood at the sound of the gunfire.

  “Not for much longer if they have any say” Came a weak, groaned voice from the wreckage, which was punctuated by gunfire being returned from the fab bay, again most of it ricocheting off the inside of the hatch.

  I stumbled my way over to him and the door and flung open the panel next to it.

  Well more ripped, to be honest the C.O.G. Standard panels had ass ergonomics for any of their maintenance panels accessible from the corridors.

  They were all far more usable from inside the walls.

  I spotted what I was looking for immediately and ripped out the ruptured piece of conduit, then yanked down the remaining wires and connected them to the other side.

  The hatch leading the fab slammed shut with a crunch as it cut a steel beam in half.

  I nodded to that and looked towards the remains of the man who had been holding this position so gamely.

  He was covered in blood, and his face had multiple cuts all over it which were bleeding profusely.

  That being said most of the blood wasn't from him, but from his partner who had been bisected and was currently on either side of him.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Looks like one of our APC's rammed right into the mouth of the ship. Blew the hatch right off. Then...”He took a big breath, like he was having trouble breathing.

  “Then troopers in heavy armor started coming out. PEOPLE. Our People. I don't know how the hell the virus managed to trick them or... Shit do you think the suits were compromised?” Ricky asked.

  I just nodded as I looked him over and turned to the door. Frowning. I put my hand against the door, which was currently above me, and I could feel what felt like a half dozen people stomping around.

  I could feel my face do that thing my sister's didn't like. They said it made me look scary.

  I took out the tablet Brayden had given me and plugged the little retractable cable it had into the ceiling above me, and quickly navigated to the diagnostic panel for the fabricator.

  A wall of alerts appeared before me, and I flicked them all away as I looked for the quickest solution to the problem.

  Then I found the window I had been looking for.

  FOREIGN MATTER PRESENT IN FABRICATOR BAY

  FABRICATOR PROCESSES COMPROMISED

  RESOLVE Y/N?

  I tapped Y and a new window opened.

  DECONSTRUCT OBSTRUCTION

  VOID OBSTRUCTION

  SIGNAL MAINENANCE

  Were the three options presented to me, and I thought about it.

  We were going vertical out of the atmosphere, which meant there was a ton of force pushing the 'obstruction' down and into us, away from the airlock, so voiding it was out.

  The maintenance bots would get destroyed by the men who had boarded us.

  So there was only one option.

  I selected DECONSTRUCT OBSTRUCTION

  A warning came up.

  MOVEMENT DETECTED IN BAY

  BIOLOGICALS DETECTED IN BAY

  HIGH PROBABILITY OF LIVING BEING IN BAY

  CONTINUE WITH DECONSTRUCTION Y/N?

  I selected Y and turned to the injured man beneath me... Rekki? I think it was Rekki.

  “Rekki? Where are you hurt?” I asked.

  I heard a flop and cussing from behind me as Hwang flopped out of the little maintenance hatch I had just recently emerged from.

  “What the hell happened h...” She was interrupted by the screams that had started above us.

  I had been ignoring the bumping and movement I had been hearing from above. I had even ignored most of vibrations that I was almost certain were gunshots, transmitting vaguely into the hull.

  But the scream came from the door loud and clear.

  I looked up at the door dourly.

  “His helmet must be pressed right up against the bulkhead.” I said disinterestedly. You learned to tell where things were by how they transmitted through the hull of the ship pretty quickly.

  “What is going on?” Megan asked. She hadn't pulled her way out of the hatch yet, and was staring down at Hwang and us. It was likely the screams just sounded like more engine noise from there.

  “Just some dumb shits getting what was coming to them. You going to help me with your friend?” I motioned to Ricky laying wounded on the ground.

  I was so done with this planet and it's people.

  Brayden had been all noble about wanting to help them after the Berzerker attack, but at this point I was of the opinion we should have just left them to die. First the religious fanatic and his fuckgirl mistress, then the vice president, then this tin can full of goons.

  AND shooting Brayden's arm off.

  Her old captain would have dropped a missile on a city for any of that. I had seen her do it. At the time I was horrified by such a thing, but I think I could understand why now.

  Megan and Hwang warily moved to help Ricky out of the wreckage, pushing me out of the way with their bodies, which I allowed.

  I looked down at my tablet, still connected to the network, and saw several pending communications. I tabbed through them while Megan and Hwang went to work gingerly pulling girders off of Rekki, and occasionally moving bits of meat that had been their squadmate up until launch not moments before.

  I waited till Hwang and Megan had gotten Rekki up, and were hauling him over to the maintenance hatch, then I pressed play.

  “Captain Brayden, your ship is now property of the planetary government of Hou Ji, return to land or face consequences.” The voice was the annoying and murder inducing voice of the vice president. My fist tightened around the digital fusion lance I now wore on my finger.

  A second message had come in on the tail of the first “Captain, the government here does not wish you harm, they merely wish you to say and speak to them more, you can tell them of old earth, you can save peoples spirits with your old knowledge as well as their lives with your... 'Technology.'” You could hear the air quotes around 'Technology.' The priestess who had stopped me from ending that fucker who had punched Brayden while he had been helping these wretched people. Even when asking for help she couldn't help but sound like she needed a good beating. Why didn't I do that to her? I know I had been thinking of it, and she couldn't have stopped me, but...

  A third message came in, but this one was live. I quickly punched it so we could all hear. I knew maybe I should be keeping things a secret, but I really needed to know where Hwang and Megan stood. If it was against us, well... better to deal with them now like I had their lieutenant.

  “Pirate vessel, I have been contracted to bring you in by order of the Hou Ji government. If you do not comply and return your stolen property before the next jump, I will hunt you down and destroy you.” This was from a voice I had not heard before.

  “Hook, can you tell me what this is about?” I asked.

  “It appears the vice-president of Hou Ji appears to have claimed our vessel as their governments property, and our taking off as an illegal act of piracy. They have hired a bounty hunter from the trade union.”

  “Fuuuuck, can we fight them?” I asked.

  “Not without a captain at the helm or giving direct orders through his interface.” Hook replied dourly. I didn't like this new Hook. I missed the old Hook's sass.

  “So no manually firing the guns.” I asked hopefully.

  “Not without physically severing them from the rest of the ship no. And even then they would not have access to the appropriate sensor picture to be anywhere near accurate enough for a void engagement.” Hook again replied depressingly.

  “Don't suppose Brayden is going to wake up before this guy catches us.”I asked hopefully.

  “From the bounty hunter ships trajectory, I believe it intends to intercept us as we exit the upper atmosphere , which will be roughly fifteen minutes.”

  “Fuck... there's nothing we can do.” I said.

  “Wait one.” Hook responded.

  “I am detecting a transmission in the clear, aimed at the bounty hunter but we are catching some of it...” Hook continued

  A new voice played over, This one I recognized from our squadron briefs as Baron Hannity. “Bounty Hunter vessel. Know this. If you engage in hostilities against the vessel Hook where I can see you, I will disintegrate you. I don't know what the government of Hou Ji is playing at, but if you lock weapons, I will end you. We don't allow scum like you in the empire for a reason.” Baron Hannity said hotly over the transmission.

  I snorted at this exchange. “Yeah... Imperial captain's don't like anyone muscling in on their turf, even if it's to hunt criminals.” I said, feeling strange as I realized I didn't really consider myself imperial anymore.

  When did that happen?

  ***********************************************************************************

  End Of Book One