As soon as I thought that the intuitive interface brought up several options, first of which was to get out of atmospheric mode, which was apparently locking out a whole slew of functions of the ship.

  As the hull reconfigured, flowing back into place, I found the option to 'expand manufactory for full production. I of course selected it.

  “Anyone else feel the ship shaking?” Hwang said out loud not a few seconds later.

  I of course didn't feel it, but I could see it as our belly spread open, dozens of tines that had been wrapped around the manufactory giving it a boxy appearance now flowered out, making it look like our ship had wings spreading out wide from underneath the ship.

  I aimed the mining laser on the underside the ship towards the disabled gas freighter and drew it towards us magnetically.

  “Should we be worried about any kind of self destruct?” I asked the crew and Hook.

  “I don't think so. Those are very clearly civilian vessels, maybe if someone sent a remote control signal to override their reactor safeties, but I am fairly certain we cut the fuel lines TO the fusion reactor during the engagement. They were one of my priority targets.” Megan said matter of factly.

  She seemed proud of herself. Good. She should be.

  “Yeah, it would be different if they were military ships, but even then most of them don't have a dedicated self destruct device. If you need to blow up the ship there are a lot of different ways you can do it without a dedicated 'I lose' button, I think only spook ships have things like that.” Carolina replied.

  “You mean spy ships and the like?” I said.

  “Yeah, or anything intelligence related. Any ship that would carry command codes to a families holdings, stuff like that.” Carolina continued.

  “Wouldn't your ship have had that?” I asked.

  “Nah, my lady was just a Baron, she didn't have access to the greater family holdings of those she held fealty to. In fact I think her only direct assets were her ship and a small moon in empire space.”

  “Huh... do you remember the name of it?” I asked, a thought, possibly even a scheme popping into my mind.

  “Um... yes.” Carolina stuck out her tongue and thought. During this whole conversation I was drawing in the wreckage towards our ship, and it had just reached the point that drones were zipping back and forth and lacing it to the manufactory with lines of cable.

  “Tantive... IV... I think.” Carolina said.

  “Wait Tantive IV?” I replied.

  “Yeah, I always thought it was weird, it's not the fourth moon, and it's not around a planet named Tantive, or in a system named Tantive.” Carolina said, sounding mystified.

  “It's a reference, from old earth, from a famous movie.” I replied.

  “What movie?” Carolina asked.

  “Star Wars. Wonder if any copies of that made it.” I said wistfully.

  “While much media from old earth was loaded into storage aboard the Ark's, there was still much that was left behind Captain. Though if anyone were to have it, it would likely be the archives on Prime.” Hook replied to me.

  “Maybe I'll look it up there and show it to you.” I replied to Carolina.

  “Salvage secured Captain. Please avoid being shot at while salvage is being disassembled. Any damage to the manufactory will penetrate directly into the ships internals.” Hook stated.

  “Understood, if we get in a fight be prepared to jettison all salvage still in the manufactory and close it up.” I said. I didn't want to give up all that salvage, but I wanted to stay in one piece even more.

  “All right, I'm going to bring us the rest of the way out of the planet's orbit and plot a course out of here... hmmm.” I said, remembering the conundrum.

  “What is it Captain?” Doctor Smith asked.

  “Deciding things. The direct route is going to force us into a fight with the empire.” I said.

  “Why's that?” Doctor Smith said.

  “Imperial checkpoint at the transit point we need to use. We might be able to get through by transmitting some of the information this ship was tasked with receiving, but transmitting it could put a lot of very vulnerable people in danger.” I said, being frank without giving away everything.

  “Hmm... that is a difficult position to be in. May I assume this information is part of a scientific enquiry? That's how said information would get us through?” Doctor Smith asked.

  Man he was sharp.

  “Yeah.” I said, not wanting to expand more.

  “Exactly how bad would it be for this information to get out.” Doctor Smith asked.

  I sighed internally.

  “I don't know for sure, what I do know is that some information must have leaked already, and it resulted in a flotilla of pirates with some very high tech gear assaulting a position with thousands of people who were otherwise unable to defend themselves. This assault resulted in the deaths of two C.O.G. Members, one of which was the previous captain of this ship, and getting them home to get the information about said vulnerable people is really the only way to ensure their safety.” I said.

  I admit, I cared more about resurrecting Bait and Joe than saving the people on the arkship, but I knew deep down that morally speaking saving all the people left on the ark vessel was the more pressing matter.

  “Hmm... How long to the jump point with the Imperials?” Doctor Smith asked as we orbited the planet, the station just coming into view.

  “About ten hours... hold on I am receiving a transmission.” I said.

  I felt the distinctive sting of a viral attack, and tensed, but when I realized what it was I relaxed.

  It was malware. Standard, run of the mill, fill your window with ads malware. Not even particularly more sophisticated than what we had in my time. I'm not sure the person who sent the message even knew it was there.

  I deigned to view the actual message with more than a hint of scorn at the clumsy attempt at infection.

  “Attention unidentified vessel, you have violated the sovereignty of Maximillion's Fuel Emporium and it's registered assets, and are therefore fined a fee of two million MFE megacredits for every ton of fuel you have stolen from said assets. In addition you are fined sixteen million MFE megacredits for the destruction of additional assets related to the harvesting of the initial assets. Furthermore you are fined an additional one hundred million MFE megacredits for the murder of contractors under employment indenture to Maximillion's Fuel Emporium. If you have insufficient credit to pay these fines, Maximillion's Fuel Emporium offers fantastic indenture payment plans. Please transmit your fines by end of day, or a penalty will be applied to your fines.” A synthesized female voice played

  I blinked, first at the amounts, then at how ballsy this Maximillion was.

  I played it for the crew after my initial screening, and swatting of malware.

  “What do you make of this?” I asked everyone after their viewing.

  “Standard free trader tactics. They charge for everything, and charge even more exorbitant fees to exchange for their currency. It's likely the fines are actually legally a part of their station's system of government, written in somewhere, but void law takes precedence everywhere and anywhere it cannot be enforced. I believe the terminology is, 'a monopoly on violence' is required to enforce anything other than void-time law, which is recognized by every polity in space.” The monotone voice came from Doctor Smith as he warily scrolled through something on his console, I could detect a string of commands coming from his console, including a string of data access requests for some of what had been transmitted to us when we had initially gotten in range of the station, and a data sharing request to Megan's console.

  Everyone had turned to look at Doctor Smith.

  He glanced up for a moment.

  “I did say I have studied abroad.” He replied shortly, before ducking back down.

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  “Okay... what should I do? It feels like if we don't answer this they're just going to hire more bounty hunters to come after us.” I said, still a little sore over the last time.

  “They might, depending on how much a...” Rekki-Ricky paused and looked at the message. “MFE megacredit is actually worth. It's possible two million MFE megacredits is actually the going rate for the fuel and they just have crazy inflation.” He continued.

  “Wouldn't that make the rest of the charges pretty low? For murder?” I asked.

  Rekki-Ricky shrugged. “Life is cheap in space. It's why the imperial's grow clones and C.O.G. Went and made themselves immortal.”

  “What about the alliance?” I asked.

  “I don't want to talk about the alliance.” He said and turned back to his console.

  He was either hiding something more or was just traumatized by his upbringing, and I could not determine which.

  “Got it.” Megan said.

  “What do you got?” Hwang leaned over and asked.

  “A response. Though... Captain, you are good at defending against malware attacks, how good are you at employing them?” Doctor Smith asked.

  “I could... put something together based on samples I have and whats in my database of E-war attacks, as well as all of the malware that station has thrown at me, why?” I responded.

  “Because I have put together a document of violations and grievances done by Maximillion's Fuel Emporium against our person, I am just going to add the attempted malware intrusion to that, along with the appropriate restitution to redress the balance. Void-law versus station law in this case. Only I have required payment of said restitution to come in the form of several commodities that are, at present, extremely expensive or in short supply on the station. For example, Service bots are everywhere on the station and are below market value, but combat drones are in short supply and the few offers I have found on the station put them at two hundred million megacredits. I have required one of those for each instance of aggression against us, which is at least three. I also added a clause that, as MFE employs malware in it's attempted collection of funds, we will return in kind, again as allowed by maritime law, so if you were to slip in a virus that would mess with their finances....” Dr. Smith said.

  “Ooooh, that's mean, I like it.” I said.

  Dr. Smith and Megan beamed, while I read the actual script.

  They had copy and pasted much of it from our database of void-law, and it looked like hook was going over it and correcting any details.

  They had also added bits and pieces of parts of the station law that had been beamed to us when we initially approached.

  “I don't get it, why don't we just drop a missile on the station and be done with it?” Hwang asked, bloodthirstily. I will admit that had been my initial knee-jerk response as well. Both to the initial assault on us and to this new insulting bill. Maybe I needed therapy?

  “Cause between the talk of indenture and what I saw in the ads there are a lot of people on that station who aren't Maximillion. Or whoever is running that place, maybe that's just a brand name.” I replied.

  “They chose to avail themselves of Max's services, fuck em.” Hwang said, sounding stubborn.

  “We almost did ourselves when we came here, imagine if you stopped off to get fuel and wound up under an indenture contract for, I don't know, breathing air? Is that a thing they charge for?” I asked Doctor Smith.

  Doctor Smith, Rekki-Ricky, and Carolina all replied at the same time. “It is.”

  “Wow that was creepy. Anyway, you think someone like that deserves to die?” I asked Hwang.

  I understood her frustration, I did, but spacing a bunch of people cause they had the misfortune of being slaved out was not something I was willing to do.

  Yet.

  Willing to do yet.

  I knew myself well enough that there was a limit to my good will.

  “Yeah... You're right I just don't like that we have to let that asshole live cause he's using a whole station as hostages.” Hwang replied.

  “Fair. Maybe if we come back to this place we can fab up a bunch of breacher bots or something to dig him out.” I said.

  A loud 'Ahem' was heard by Doctor Smith.

  “As I was saying, if you could implement a virus that went with this invoice, you could, for instance, have it go through and look for void clauses in all of the holder's contracts, such as indenture contracts, and enact them or change them enough sothat they become void. Possibly add a note to all the indenture's to check their contracts after. That is a fairly narrow focus, and would be hard to prove due to how Free Traders word their contracts, ie by making the control very one sided in their favor, and would likely result in this Maximillion being lynched. Or, I guess, spaced, I believe is the more common method of 'death-by-mob' in space.” Doctor Smith continued.

  “Damn that's cold.” Hwang said.

  “You sure you're a doctor?” Rekki-Ricky continued.

  Carolina and Megan just stared at the doctor.

  “I am a doctor who was once forced into an indenture contract.” Doctor Smith stated very calmly, almost mechanically, his face neutral.

  I brought up what limited data my sensors could find on his current state, which, of course, brought up a lot of metric I did not really understand, until Hook did his ghost-in-the-machine whisper in my ear.

  “Doctor Smith appears to be dissasociating.”

  I winced.

  “Sorry to hear that doc.” I said, keeping things calm.

  And I was. That sounded like near slavery. At least the empire was willing to call it actual slavery.

  Doctor Smith shrugged.

  “It taught me some important lessons.” He said.

  “Like?” I replied.

  “Leverage.” Doctor Smith continued.

  We all waited for him to expand on that.

  Hwang broke the silence.

  “Well?” She said.

  Doctor Smith just send me the initial blurb he had told me, along with what looked to be 64 pages of law, with space for an attachment in the file.

  “Ready for the virus captain.” Doctor Smith said, ignoring Hwang, and really everyone else on the bridge looking at him.

  I received it and started to think. I was certain hook had some kind of store of malware code I could use.

  With a thought the two of us dove into what we had in our archives.

  I found something tagged in an archived post from what appeared to be a C.O.G. Social media post... or a forum... it didn't work exactly like either, but close enough.

  It was from a C.O.G. Captain who had dealt with the free traders and had come up with something to really fuck with them.

  “Oooh... I like this.” I said to Hook.

  He looked at it.

  “Devious.” Hook replied.

  I grabbed the code, added a little flair of my own... and by flair I mean part of the berzerker virus that had made it very hard to track down, that helped it camouflage itself; was it unethical to use a fragment of code from a killing machine out to exterminate the human race against someone whose only sin was trying to kill me and then charging me for the privilege of being killed? Maybe, but my restraint was already stretched pretty thin; and then packaged It with the legal document Megan and Doctor Smith had prepared.

  I sent it to them for final review.

  The read it over.

  “How is the virus going to spread?” Megan asked.

  “It's on receipt of the message, it will hide in the communication buffer and will spread from there.” I replied.

  “So what does it do?” Doctor Smith said.

  “It target's Crypto currencies, and randomizes the amounts in any particular wallet connected to the network daily, transferring from one wallet to another either as soon as said wallet connects to the network to make a transaction or after a randomized amount of time has passed. It also infects the crypto-currency itself, and will infect any other crypto currency detected on the same network.”

  Megan and Doctor Smith blinked.

  “I think you just destroyed their entire economy.” Megan said.

  “I absolutely did! I am betting this station descends into anarchy within the week.” I replied, giggling a little as I said it.

  “Once word of this gets out no free-trader ship is going to want to dock here, they'll quarantine it!” Doctor Smith said, laughing.

  “That is the plan!” I said. If I could grin I would.

  “Let's send it! It's not as good as dropping a missile on them, but I am loving the idea of all the panic that is going to rip through that station.” Hwang added.

  I sent it.

  “Now, let's head to that jump point.” I said.