She had aimed her grapnel for the axis point of the cylinder. As a way to cut down on emissions – and thus, reduce the chances of being detected – the bad guy's space station spun for its gravity. That made boarding it a tricky proposition, as simply landing on the side would have sent her flying off into interstellar space. But even standing on the axis point, Dey could feel the spin of the station, tugging on her. Loki could cut the inertia, but if she had to rely on that for more than a few seconds, her K9s would get drained faster than an iPhone two generations past its sell-by date.
Fortunately, the axis point being the place where the pseudo-gravitational effects of rotation was weakest also made it the best place to put an airlock. Dey pressed her palm to the contact point of the maintenance access panel and let Loki get to work. The airlock cycled and she dragged herself in. Gently catching up against the wall, Dey sighed – closing her eyes for a moment. She wasn't resting. She was thinking out basic plans.
[Sir,] she said, sending a message through the closing airlock doors. [I've managed to penetrate the airlock on the station. Loki, how are we on being detected?]
I think they might have detected us landing on the surface – but they don't know the airlock is open. I made sure of that.
Commander Atty's voice boomed through her head:
Take the control system out for that damn Perseus ship! Now!
Dey nodded. The wall she leaned against gave – she sat up and then stood, realizing that the
wall
was actually the floor. She grumbled under her breath about ass backward spin stations. The elevator dropped down a shaft of metal and ceramics as Dey drew her pistol, checked its charge, and waited. When she got to the bottom, she and Loki were already prepped. The five security goons were prepped too – but they might have expected marines, not someone who could teleport behind them. Dey let her hand follow Loki's targeting patterns and each man hit the deck – the elctrostatic charge coursing through their bodies. Dey pulled a zip-tie from her utility pouch, and whistled cheerily as she took them each into custody.
"B-bitch!" one of the guards managed to snarl through clenched teeth.
"Thank you," Dey said in a sing song, picking up his civilian brand fluxgun from the ground. She checked the ammo read out, whistling quietly. They had almost a military amount of ammo jammed into its D-mag. She slapped the side of the rifle, then started forward down the corridor. [You jammed them, right?]
Don't teach your AI to suck eggs,
Loki said, squeezing her shoulders.
Dey grinned, pressing herself to the side of the corridor as she continued deeper into the belly of the beast – listening to Loki as he sent back a spoofed report in the voice of the man who had sworn at her, replicated from a single word.
All clear down here – it was a false reading.
###
The brig was relatively untouched. The ironic truth was that the last thing you wanted your prisoners to do during a space battle was escape – and preventing escape tended to mean being protected better than the actual crew of the actual fucking space ship.
"Let me out." The voice that growled out of the cell that Marin walked past made him stop. He stared.
"You
stabbed
me!" he exclaimed, looking at the immense bulk of the Shockpod. The Shockpod grinned at him. Beamed, really. His teeth were incredibly sharp.
"That way, you know I am good at a fight. And this is a ship being boarded."
"How can-" Marin shook his head. He stepped backwards, so he could look at both the Shockpod and the Huntress' cells. "Listen, we're being boarded."
"Knew it," the Shockpod said.
"And we have
no
idea what the
fuck
is attacking us," Marin said, the marines and air force crew nodding for emphasis. A faint scream rang through the ceiling, followed by a screech of tearing metal. The ship shuddered. "But it looks like a black hole that is literally skinning people alive."
The Huntress' face plate shifted to a shocked :O face. "A Revenant," she said. "The Veil Keepers' personal attack craft."
"That thing's a fucking
spaceship
?" the air force woman – names, Marin thought, I need names – asked.
"The Veil Keepers do not differentiate between types of vehicle. They have but a single one, used for all manner of destruction. The only method to kill it is to use a Huntress," she said, sounding quite proud of herself. "There are many legends of our warrior-poets slaying Keeper craft in the last Great War."
"Or use a human-" the Shockpod started.
"Shut
up
Kuz!" the Huntress hissed.
"Open the door," Marin said to the air force woman. She looked at him blankly.
"I'm just a third rank astro!" she said. "I don't have access to the brig keys!"
Marin grumbled. "Fuck this." He pulled his pistol from his pocket. Or, more accurately, he pulled the chunks of what became his pistol from his pocket. As he snapped it together, one of the marines whistled.
"We need to update our security procedures," he said.
"Hey, don't feel so bad," Marin said, grinning as he switched the barrel from rubber to explosive. "I bought it on an alien planet. Everyone, stand back."
A moment later, the cell door exploded inwards.
###
Dey stepped out of the doorway after having walked down what seemed like an entire office park of empty comp-sci research equipment and abandoned corridors and came into the heart of the station. The inside of the cylinder, was mostly empty space, and that empty space was filled with a gorgeous atrium. Trees and plants, artfully done up to look like the forests and meadows of earth, spread outwards and upwards, circling overhead. She even saw a lake plastered to what her hind-brain tried to tell her was the sky. Loki quietly corrected that misconception and the panic faded.
But that didn't remove the buzzing fear and confusion that was at the root of it.
[Where
is
everyone?] Dey thought.
"Hurm."
Dey swung her rifle around to aim at the voice that emerged from the woods to her left. Standing there, cane in hand, was a older looking gentleman. He was nearly sixty, maybe sixty five – though thanks to the increasing lifespan of the average human, she wasn't sure if he was actually that old or
older
. He was dressed in a finely made three piece suit, with a tie tucked down his vest. His cane looked like it had some integrated technology worked into it from the way that tiny wires ran from it to his wrist. He was flanked by two guards, their rifles held at a steady rest. Dey's eyes narrowed.
"You don't seem particularly shocked," she said.
"When an admittedly very skillful spoof comes from a team of five security guards comes in, it is not exceptionally difficult to guess what is coming," the man said. He smiled, showing very white teeth. "Pleased to meet you, Miss Gallagher."
"Lieutenant," she said, not lowering her rifle.
"My apologies," he said, bowing his head. "Now, please, forgive me for not having a cat to pet. But I am the man you have been looking for. My name is Simon Woods and I am the one behind it all."
Dey looked at his face. Then she cocked her head. "Who the
fuck
are you?"
The response was expected – and yet, still strange. For a moment, Simon's face twisted into a mask of pure fury, rage, contemptible hatred. She could see the urge to not just hurt her, but kill her. And not just kill, he wanted to tear her to pieces with his bare hands. Then the moment passed and he brushed a single wrinkled hand along his chest, as if correcting part of his clothes that had gotten mussed.
"I am the head researcher on a project by my parent company. That is, Exxon-Dow Petrochem."
"Yo-" Dey blinked. "You're a
petrochem
company?"
