The Transporter's Favor by C.M. Simpson (pride and prejudice read .txt) 📕

looked. The cells and the storage areas were close to each other, each connected with docking bays for larger ships, no doubt meant to carry the cargo away, or bring more in for storage prior to transfer. The storage areas where the ship shells were being kept amounted to miniature docking bays in, and of, themselves. It was possible to lock the entire area down and stop reinforcements from reaching the areas inside. My guess is that the wolves relied on the hostile nature of the asteroid field, and their own base guarding the entrance of the Vameran jump point to keep thieves away. They hadn’t really set themselves up to prevent boarding.

Unless there was something we’d missed…

I looked but I couldn’t see it. It made me feel better that Abby, Rohan and Tens looked with me, and none of them could see anything, either. Looked like the boys would have a slightly easier run of it.

“Which is why you’re going in with back-up,” Abby said. “Delight made a pact with the wolves about allies. Any of her team get caught, and she can negotiate them back out.”

“You hope,” Rohan said, and his words, though quiet, were as bitter as vacuum’s bite.

32—The Dasojin Retrieval

Abby hit Delight up, one more time, only to find she was tied down at the station for the next two hours, and that most of Team One had been seconded away. She’d be at least an hour, and we needed to cope. We also needed to ‘shift our asses’ and ‘get it done’.

“Well,” Abs said, in a huff. “That’s inconvenient.”

“Yeah, but we can cause our own distractions,” I said, and caught the looks of surprise from the boys. “What? Odyssey-trained, remember?”

“And the rest,” Mack muttered, which only made me wonder exactly how much he’d rifled through my head.

“Shut it!” I snapped, and brought up the station schematics on Abby’s forward view. “Let’s assume the wolves have noticed the comms have gone quiet from their main base.”

I held up a hand to still a protest from Tens.

“Let’s just assume we’re not as clever as we think we are, and there was some kind of real-time warning that went out there. Let’s assume they’re kinda waiting for us to appear.”

“In which case we need Delight’s team, more than we know,” Mack muttered, and Tens nodded.

I shook my head.

“We need their fuzzy little lupar heads otherwise occupied,” I said, and Rohan snorted.

“Nothing short of life or death…” he began, and I smiled, lighting up four sections on the map.

“Life support, san units, gravity, comms, and emergency pods.” I looked at the map for a second longer, and then lit up a fifth section. “Teleport. We’re going to play with every single one. They’re about to have a station-wide systems crash.”

“They’re bloody well gonna know we’re coming,” Mack grumbled, but his eyes were alight with interest as he studied the map. “Let’s lock ’em in their cabins, while we’re at it. Should slow them down.”

“Not by much,” Rohan said, but the look he wore was borderline evil and mischief.

“Delight says we can’t kill any of them,” Abby reminded us, and I pouted at her.

Rohan didn’t look too impressed, either.

Abby stood firm.

“You either promise to toe that line, or I lock you all in your heads and wait for Delight to come get my folk.”

Given just how badly Abby wanted her people out of there, who was I to mess with that?

“Deal,” I said. “Now help me tweak this.”

It took us a half hour before we were happy with the plan. Abby ran through the station’s repair logs and discovered where there had been recent activity in the areas we wanted to hit—and then she highlighted a couple of just-completed adjustments to the hangar compartments.

“Nice,” Rohan murmured, his voice filled with glee, and we went to work.

The wolves had upped their security in the short time between when we’d been in their system, and this time. That was handy, too. Sending in a virus to that interrupted data input between the interface and the system kept their techs looking one way, while valves in sewerage systems failed, or reversed, station-wide, and power fluctuations ran rampant.

Consternation showed on the commander’s face as he discovered the emergency shift was locked in its quarters, and then the doors in other sectors began to jam. We watched the station crew scurry, using their security feeds, while all they saw on their screens was intermittent static.

“Teleport’s off-line,” Rohan said, a half hour in, “and they’re trying to discover what happened to their teleport shields.” He snickered. “Yeah, boys. Good luck with that.”

I don’t know what he’d done, but it was chaos down there. I pulled myself out of the system, so I could talk to Abby.

“We’re about ready,” I said. “You got control of the locks and gravity in the sections we need?”

“Oh, Honey. Do I ever.”

“When you’re ready, Abby,” Mack said. “Send us in, and let Delight know we’re going in, and that the target status is pissed.”

He looked over at me, and sent me a quick snap of the living quarters. Wolves in breathers, dodging clusters of waste, as they tried to operate doors manually.

“Nothing like kicking over the ants’ nest before we go inside, hey, Cutter?”

I gave him the finger, just as Abs teleported him out. It was almost funny. She sent Tens, next, followed by Rohan and Cascade. I waited until after she’d finished, before I spoke.

“Abs,” I said. “Don’t send the team with me straight away. I might have a better chance of getting in unnoticed without four hulking great space Marines in tow.”

“You might also get your tail shot off, before anyone can help you,” she snapped.

“Just… Can you put them on stand-by? If it goes south, send them in to wherever you think best, but let me at least try getting to him on my own.”

“Fine,” and it was the best HMT shrug a space ship could manage. “On your head, but I’m passing what’s left