Second Dominion (Fourth Age)
Aurean Cycle no. 462 of the Macbeth dynasty, reign of Aldric II
Second Quadrant, Interquadrant Frontier
"—And… there goes our budget," Law huffed.
"Asking two hundred thousand pods for this is indeed kinda stingy," Jean commented. "It's not like we were at an authorized market. Still, at least… no more public transit." She clasped her hands together in thanks.
"Well… if this thing works, we're set for life," Amarel reassured them.
"If…" Law sighed. "I've got a bad feeling."
The group had successfully purchased the ship (thanks also to a small financial assist from Lacrosse) and spent the last few days preparing the plan and the gear needed for the much-anticipated hit on Futura Life's convoy. At that moment they had parked the ship amid a belt of wreckage near the border between the First and Second Quadrants: a mandatory gate route for freight ships, and a confirmed stop for the convoy according to Snow's document.
Around the Fortwin stretched a ring of rusted satellites, small meteorites, and the skeletons of abandoned merchant ships, all suspended in sepulchral silence. Some bumped together slowly, dragged by imperceptible gravitational shifts; others seemed asleep, plating still intact but blackened by old explosions. Tiny lights blinked here and there like fireflies in the void.
"So, in the attachment Snow gave us it says it'll have the look and features of a standard convoy: to frontier eyes, it'll be a routine transition."
"They want to hide in plain sight," Law deduced.
"Yeah, that's probably the best way not to attract attention," Jean echoed.
"Ah, and here there's the clause that says 'the convoy may be monitored from a distance,'" Amarel said, scrolling on the tablet.
"Sounds like cereal warnings," Law commented.
"Anyone here have guild intolerances?" Amarel played along, drawing a laugh from Lacrosse.
Then the boy thought again. "Wait, guilds?"
"Yeah, corps usually do that," Jean explained. "They contact the IGU, which creates contracts for protection, operations in other Quadrants, or temporary reinforcements to add to their private militia."
"So what do we do?" Lacrosse asked.
"In theory, we should have enough time to leave and avoid a direct encounter," Law reassured him. "In theory."
"Okay, roll call…" Amarel went to the back of the ship and checked the "shopping list" (gear bought mostly with Lacrosse's money). "…We've got eight EMP grenades, two each; new blasters; magnetic belts; two portable lasers; four working space suits; magnetic harpoons; some masks; and… beer?" Amarel turned toward the rest of the group.
"Oh, that's me," Law admitted, guilty.
After finishing the inventory, Amarel set the tablet down and stretched. Law was trying to mount the blasters onto the suits' magnetic belt mounts, but each time one fell on him. Jean prepped the masks, while Lacrosse tried to open one of the beers without making it explode in zero gravity.
--
After a few hours of waiting, about ten kilolumes from the frontier, a large cargo ship emerged from a gate, marked with a stylized leaf inscribed in a green pentagon: Futura Life's logo. Five smaller escorts with the same logo surrounded the cargo ship.
The convoy proceeded slowly toward the frontier.
"Is the coffee finished?" asked the pilot of the accompanying ship in front.
"No, there should be some in the back," replied a crew member who set off, but stopped to check the radar and noticed it was signaling the presence of a ship ahead of them.
"Hey, slow down," he said. "Can't you see there's traffic up ahead?"
"What are you talking about?" the pilot shot back. "There's nothing ahead. Better warn the ones in back to get the customs papers ready. And you have a coffee too—you need it."
"Bran, literally just turn around!" the other protested.
The pilot reluctantly glanced at the radar, which in fact confirmed what his companion had said."Okay, they must be using some kind of anti-reflective cover. Better slow down—if we crash, it's a mess."
The pilot pressed a few buttons on the shuttle's controls to send a notification to the rest of the convoy. All six vehicles abruptly slowed their advance.
"…"
A few minutes passed, and everything seemed to be proceeding routinely.
"Hey, Bran, here's the cof—" Suddenly there was a bang, followed by a faint rumble. The shuttle's lights went out. The controls, fixed communications, artificial gravity—everything was dead.
"Oh, crap. Right now?!" the pilot complained, rebooting his earpiece and hailing the other vehicles.
"Convoy, Arrow 1, we're in blackout, hold course temporarily," he said, annoyed.
"Arrow 2, we're in blackout too," came the voice in his ear.
"Arrow 3, blackout here."
"Arrow 4, same."
"Arrow 5, same situation."
"What happened?!"
The cargo ship's pilot—also in blackout—left his seat nervously and moved through the cockpit, floating due to the loss of artificial gravity. Someone was rapping their knuckles on an emergency panel.
"Did the auxiliary battery go?"
"No, it won't power on at all. There's a chance it was a targeted pulse."
"Are we under attack?!"
"Check the air. If it starts to drop…"
An intermittent beep flashed on the auxiliary monitor. The technician swore."Pressure's dropping!"
"Contact the outside!"
"Besides the private channel, we've got no comms!"
Then the pilot's heart sank. "The canisters!" he exclaimed. "Did the refrigeration system go too?!" he asked the crew behind him.
"It's an autonomous system. Fridge module isolated with inertia battery. It rebooted on its own right away," replied the guard posted before the cargo.
The pilot breathed a sigh of relief.
Meanwhile, under the cargo ship's hull, Law and Amarel were in space suits and working the lasers to cut through the bottom. They had capitalized on the confusion caused by their EMP grenades to attach two magnetic harpoons beneath the cargo ship's hull, haul themselves up, and hold steady in position to cut. Along with their "shopping list," the group had also obtained a "misaligner": a tool that tampers with radars or any tracking device and shows the position of a body that isn't actually there. They used it to show the convoy a nonexistent ship ahead so they would slow down. In addition, they used the cloaker kindly installed by the ex–bounty hunter who sold them the ship, to hide the Fortwin's real position from the convoy—namely, right beneath it.
"No, no, Law, you've got to go a little further. If you cut there, the canisters will fall. Look…" Amarel warned over the private comms channel, showing him the tablet with a projection of the cargo ship's interior attached. The space suits they wore were tight, fairly thin. The black-and-red Omnitech fabric had a smooth, slightly matte surface with metallic highlights at the edges. Elastic inserts were visible at the joints, like knees and elbows. The corporation's logo—a stylized red hexagonal O in broken lines—was inlaid in luminescent microfibers on the chest and back.
"Alright, alright, my bad" Law eased back slightly with the magnetic harpoon.
"Let's hurry—this suit is tight on me," he complained.
"Um… I think that one's mine…" Lacrosse confessed.
"Why did we get four suits if two of us are using them?"
After a good fifteen seconds, Law and Amarel completed a rectangle with the lasers.
"Get ready," Law said, pulling the blaster from his belt.Amarel nodded, doing the same. "Okay, you can pull," he said to Jean over the channel.
The ship began to reel in the harpoon lines, so the rectangle the lasers had cut detached from the hull, opening an actual hole.With the breach, the vacuum violently sucked all the air out of the ship. As it vented, the guards were blown outside, and Law and Amarel promptly shot them with their blasters as they came out. Now they were just bodies drifting.
When the hold's air pressure allowed it, the two used the harpoon lines to push upward and successfully entered the bay, finding themselves before the row of canisters. Each one emitted a milky vapor, as if it contained a living, cold substance.
"An opportunity for true power, huh…" Amarel remarked, eyeing the twelve cylinders placed side by side, three rows of four. A canister came up to about his waist.
"Imagine if Snow's lactose intolerant," Law said, drawing a laugh from Lacrosse below.
Amarel smirked. "Anyway, the attachment says the canisters have to be kept below a certain temperature. We can't take the whole refrigeration system, but in theory the equipment includes a single unit."
"Alright, I'll look for it," Law said.
Meanwhile, aboard the Fortwin, Jean was at the controls, ready to kick on the autopilot at any moment. Lacrosse, instead, was in back on the couch, on a call with his sister Clarisse from the tablet.
"Hi, Cla!" the boy greeted, excited.
After a brief, imperceptible smile, Clarisse arched her fine eyebrow. "Well?"
"We're in the middle of the job!" Lacrosse replied. "So far it's all going well, Law and Amarel are up there grabbing the canisters. I gotta tell you, it's not anyth—"
"BRIGHT SKIES!" a curse boomed over the ship's radio.
"THIS ASSHOLE SHOT OFF MY FINGER!"
"???"
On the cargo ship, Law was about to grab the single cooling unit when, suddenly, by instinct, he jerked back: the pilot up front had managed to resist the suction of air through the hull breach, and had an emergency respirator on (in Futura Life's safety protocol, the respirator would give the user enough time to don the equipment's space suits). He'd hidden for a while, grabbed a blaster, then tried to shoot Law. The latter, backing away fast, got only his pinky and ring finger of the synthetic arm hit, slicing off the two fingers and parts of the suit glove.
Law didn't feel actual pain, since the limb wasn't his. But by design, synthetic limbs send a strong jolt to notify major damage. From the stumps of the broken pinky and ring finger spilled countless microscopic wires crackling with electricity (synthetic limbs work thanks to electrical impulses and mechanical force from the rest of the body), along with a rigid core meant to emulate bone.
"Oh, look at that, you're a reptilian now," Amarel quipped, hiding behind the canisters. Law, turned away, center-punched the pilot's chest with his blaster without even looking.
"Come on, the maintenance on this stuff costs a fortune," he grumbled, brows knit.
"Looks like you'll have to reinstall the cyber arm, Mr. Freelance," Amarel said with a smirk.
"NEVER!" Law snapped.
He grabbed the canister, and the two began descending the shaft. The Fortwin had two airlock depressurization chambers (isolated rooms to enter and exit into space without venting air from the ship's main areas), one at the rear and one on the roof. They used the latter, since it was directly beneath the cargo ship.
"Mon Dieu, I suppose something went wrong?" Clarisse commented from the tablet. Lacrosse shrugged.
"Um, no! No! Don't worry, Miss Rouge!" Jean reassured her loudly from the cockpit.
"Madame Poetesse, thank you," Clarisse corrected, offhand.
"Alright, alright, we're back in. Now let's get d— Oh, shit!"
The canister Law was holding with the synthetic hand (the one with three fingers) slipped and dropped onto Lacrosse's head with a dull thunk, knocking the boy to the floor. The arm gave a brief error whistle and locked up.
"…" Law stared at his arm in silence for a beat, then slowly lifted his guilty gaze toward his teammate.
"What is wrong with you?!" Amarel yelled.
"You! Bunch of—" Clarisse was about to say something, but Jean ran over and slammed the call shut on the tablet.
"Oh heavens, are you okay?" Jean gently lifted Lacrosse from the floor.
"Ha! Ha! Ha! Yeah, yeah, don't worry," Lacrosse laughed, seemingly unharmed.
Jean breathed a sigh of relief. Law and Amarel stepped out of the depressurization chamber and landed in the ship's main hall.
"Sorry…" Law whispered.
"Good, we should have everything," Amarel declared.
"Okay, now let's go before the convoy ships come back online," Jean continued.
She set the route in the cockpit for the autopilot: they would take a gate to an abandoned mining colony a few light-years from there to shake any pursuers. Then they'd pass by a station, Stella Nova, where after a few hours they'd take another gate to finally reach Alay.
"Fifteen million…" Jean said dreamily. "Dad and I will finally be safe…"
The ship had departed and had put enough distance between them and the convoy.
"Oh heavens, we actually did it," Amarel said.
--
The ship flew silently over the mining colony built on a pair of moons of an abandoned planet, Mexa Secundus. The scene surrounding the Fortwin as it approached the gate was the Silver Pillars, enormous columns of nebulae in bluish and grayish hues.
Law was staring gloomily at the two stumps on his left hand. "Well, I guess some of the money will have to go to—"
"Oh, crap!" Jean swore.
"What happened?" Lacrosse asked.
"Outside!" she shouted.
A few hundred lumes away from the Fortwin, three black fighters had appeared—small and fast.
"So they really did hire a guild…" Amarel said, worried.
"Raven," Law observed, noting the fighters' color and the emblem on them, a silver wing inside a diamond.
"And now…?" Lacrosse asked, worried.
"Eh, we'll think of something," Law said nonchalantly. "I doubt that—"
The ship suddenly shook so hard it tossed all four of them to the floor.
They were firing.
Glossary
Megalume: multiple of the lume, equal to one million lumes.