Bad Pennies: Phase I

“Don’t want to bother you, Ange,” Rory said, “but if we don’t move in the next thirty seconds, we’re fucked.”

Angela stood behind his chair, her leather trench-coat casting a bat-like shadow. She watched the Dacre Consolidated transport fill the cockpit glass.

The ship was immense. Pristine white armour curved away in both directions, unmarked apart from the black geometric logo beneath its bridge. The Penny drifted in its shadow, close enough for Angela to make out the recessed heads of individual hull bolts.

Somewhere behind them, the asteroid completed another fraction of its turn.

The blind spot existed for ninety-two seconds on each rotation. They had spent sixty-four of this one arguing about whether the client had lied.

Sarah’s voice came over the cockpit speaker. “I have now checked the transport manifest three times. There’s no Axion-6 component aboard.”

“The manifest is bullshit,” Angela said.

“You seem awfully sure for someone who claims to know very little of the details.”

Rory kept watching the range figures. “Or some cunt paid us twelve per cent up front to die stupidly.”

“The deposit cleared,” Angela said. “Hard credits in the bank, and it’s up to us whether we die.”

“Those hard credits just about stretched to the fuel we used getting here.” He tapped the gauge with one finger. It didn’t improve. “If we leave now, we can reach the Kiln. We can’t dock, buy propellant or bribe anyone not to impound us, but we can reach it.”

Angela had done the maths before accepting the job. The remaining fee would clear three months of berth charges, replace the docking relays and buy a fuel gasket manufactured during the present century.

“The cargo is aboard the target vessel,” she said.

Sarah sighed. “According to whom?”

Angela looked at the white hull and didn’t answer.

“Twenty-eight seconds,” Rory added.

The starboard console coughed. Something beneath it rattled with the determined rhythm of a loose component attempting escape.

Rory glanced down. “That’s new.”

“It’s the fuel gasket,” Angela said.

“I know it’s the fuel gasket.”

“Then it isn’t new.”

Angela’s cybernetic right eye tracked the faint sweep of the transport’s sensor array. Red lines crossed her vision, measuring the narrow wedge of darkness between the corporate ship and the tumbling rock behind them. The blind spot was shrinking.

Twenty seconds.

From the lower airlock came the heavy knock of metal against metal, followed by Dave’s voice over the comms. In the background, was the sound of an old Taylor Swift song, late phase from the 2060s come-back tour.

“Thermal charge is secured,” Dave reported. “Sarah would like it noted that I placed it three millimetres left of centre.”

“Four,” Sarah said in the background.

“I stand corrected.”

Angela rested one hand on Rory’s chair. “Take us in.”

“You still haven’t told us who gave you the route.”

“Correct Rory, I did not..”

“Good. I’d hate to think I’d missed it.”

He looked over his shoulder. In the reflected light of the corporate hull, his expression was almost wounded.

“Any particular part, or shall I aim for the enormous armed object and hope?”

“Maintenance hatch beneath the secondary drive.”

The coordinates appeared on his display.

Rory’s hands settled on the flight controls. The performance vanished from his face. However carelessly he approached the rest of his life, he never treated flying as a joke.

“There you are,” he murmured to the ship. “Try not to embarrass me.”

He fired the lateral thrusters.

The Penny slid out of the asteroid’s shadow.

The transport noticed them at once.

Three defence turrets dropped from its hull and opened fire. White plasma crossed the darkness, close enough to flood the cockpit with light. Rory rolled beneath the first burst. The ship’s frame groaned and Angela tightened her grip on his chair.

“They’re pushing us away from the drive,” he said.

“Hold the approach.”

“That approach currently contains gunfire.”

“Yes.”

“Just checking you’d seen it.”

The targeting pattern altered. Angela’s optic followed the shift before the turrets moved.

“Down four degrees. Then hard starboard.”

Rory obeyed without asking why. A volley passed through the space they had occupied. He reversed the roll and drove The Penny beneath the transport’s shield lip.

Blue static crawled over the cockpit glass. For an instant there was nothing ahead of them but white armour.

“Clamps,” Rory called.

The docking system struck the transport with a crash that travelled through the deck and up Angela’s legs. Magnetic locks engaged one after another.

Rory let his forehead touch the flight controls.

“We’ve successfully attached ourselves to the thing trying to kill us.”

“Keep the engines warm.”

“They’re leaking fuel. Warmth isn’t going to be the problem.”

Angela was already at the ladder.

The lower airlock smelled of hot circuitry and the citrus solvent Sarah used on anything she considered salvageable. Dave stood at the outer hatch in matte-black armour, broad enough to leave very little hatch visible around him. Dockyard lifting servos had been threaded through his arms and spine years ago; the armour made the resulting bulk look military. The thermal charge glowed blue against the inner display.

A handwritten label beside the display read OUTER DOOR UNRELIABLE BELOW TWELVE DEGREES. Someone had added OR ABOVE TWELVE DEGREES underneath. Angela recognised Sarah’s handwriting and Rory’s amendment.

Sarah crouched beside it with a cracked datapad balanced across one knee. Loose curls had escaped the wire tying back her hair. She pushed her ear defenders down around her neck and frowned at the charge.

“The transport has altered the pressure behind the maintenance hatch,” she said. “When we breach, it will vent into us rather than out into space.”

“Deliberately?” Angela asked.

“The system changed after our clamps engaged. But whether deliberate or not, it will throw whatever is loose in that corridor directly through the opening.”

Angela clipped her rifle to its sling. “Stay behind him.”

Sarah looked up at Dave. “That was already my plan.”

Angela sealed the inner hatch. “Do it.”

Dave pressed the detonator.

The charge burned a white circle through the corporate hull. The centre plate fell inward and a blast of pressurised air hit Dave square in the chest, carrying smoke, fragments of storage crates and several thousand sheets of printed inventory. He took one step back. Sarah didn’t move at all behind him.

“Clear,” he said.

Angela went through first.

The transport’s interior was startlingly bright after The Penny. White walls, polished floor, seamless doors. Dacre built ships to look like nothing aboard them would ever need repairing.

Red emergency lights came on.

Sarah climbed through the breach and connected her pad to the nearest wall terminal. A map unfolded across the screen.

“Vault is three levels down. They’re sealing the route from the bridge.”

“Crew?” Angela asked.

“Life signs are confined to the forward safe rooms. Automated security between us and the lift.”

Dave stepped through carrying a kinetic shotgun and the two equipment cases.

The first bulkhead began descending at the end of the corridor.

Angela ran.

They covered the distance with seconds to spare. Dave threw one equipment case beneath the door. The descending steel crushed its outer frame, stopped, then continued forcing itself down one hydraulic pulse at a time.

Sarah dropped flat and slid through the narrowing gap. Angela followed. Dave pushed both hands beneath the buckling case and held the door long enough to roll after them.

It struck the floor behind his boots.

The lift had already locked itself. Sarah removed the front of the call panel and examined the wiring beneath.

“Thirty seconds.”

A ceiling panel opened behind them.

Angela raised her rifle as a security turret unfolded from the recess. She fired once. The round broke its optical cluster, but the weapon continued rotating, blind and active.

Dave caught the barrel before it reached them. The motor whined against his grip. He tore the turret from the ceiling and placed it carefully on the floor while it fired into the opposite wall.

The lift opened.

They descended to the transport’s lowest cargo deck. The bright public corridors gave way to gunmetal walls, exposed conduits and doors without corporate markings. The air was colder.

Sarah studied the map. “The vault should be directly ahead.”

Angela had stopped.

On the wall beside the lift, half hidden beneath a recently fitted Dacre access plate, was a small black emblem. An orbital ring crossed by a dagger.

Twenty years fell away.

A command deck burning around her. Blood on a white uniform. A man turning from the stars with irritation rather than fear because no one beneath his rank was permitted to frighten him.

Angela made herself breathe.

“Ange?” Dave said.

She looked away from the emblem. “Move.”

Sarah’s eyes travelled from Angela to the wall. She opened her mouth to speak, thought better of it and followed.

The vault entrance waited at the end of a short corridor, protected by a three-metre blast door. Its control panel carried the Dacre logo, but the locking mechanism behind it was older.

Angela knew that too.

Sarah knelt at the controls and connected her pad. Lines of green code spilled down the screen, then vanished beneath a black encryption field.

“This isn’t corporate.”

“Can you open it?” Angela asked.

Sarah shook her head.

“The system is checking for a military command key that hasn’t officially existed for twenty years.” She looked up at Angela. “That emblem was from the old Fourth Reich. So is this lock. You recognised both.”

Boots struck the deck somewhere beyond the lift doors.

Sarah tried a second override. The panel rejected it and wiped the code from her pad.

“I can break it,” she said. “But not before they reach us.”

Angela pulled off her glove and pressed her palm to the reader.

Nothing happened.

Then her optic clicked.

A narrow violet beam rose from the panel and passed across the silver lens. The dead system woke.

BIOMETRIC SIGNATURE ACCEPTED.

Sarah stared at the display.

The blast door withdrew into the wall.

Inside, a single matte-black cylinder stood within a cradle of white vapour. Violet light pulsed behind its viewing strip, slow and regular as a sleeping heartbeat.

The label beneath it read AXION-6.

Sarah stopped at the threshold while Angela entered the vault. “What command key did it find?”

“Does it matter?”

“It opened a military vault after looking into your eye. I feel it deserves a passing mention.”

Angela released the cylinder from its cradle. Cold travelled through her gloves. For a fraction of a second, the violet light brightened beneath her hands.

The ship spoke.

The voice was deep, formal, male and stripped of inflection.

“Identity confirmed. Colonel Smith.”

Sarah went still.

“Command authority restored.”

Every light in the vault turned red.

The blast door dropped between them.

Angela threw the cylinder through the narrowing gap. Sarah caught it against her chest and fell backwards. Dave dragged her clear as three tonnes of steel struck the floor.

“Angela!” Sarah hit the door release. Nothing happened.

Above Angela, sections of the vault ceiling opened in perfect sequence.

Six security droids dropped into the corridor. Their armoured feet struck the deck together. Optical arrays burned orange as rotary weapons unfolded from their chests.

The rifle was too long for what was about to happen. Angela let it hang against its sling and drew her sidearm.

“Forget that name,” she said.

The droids raised their weapons.

“Get Axion-6 back to the ship. I am going to be busy for a while.”

The first rotary cannon spun up.