Bad Pennies

The starboard console on The Penny let out a shuddering wheeze that made the metal floorboards vibrate directly through Rory’s boots.

“That’s the primary fuel gasket,” Rory announced, not lifting his eyes from the flight sticks. His fingers were moving across the manual thruster toggles with a speed born of pure, unadulterated terror. “It’s crying, Ange. If we don’t drop out of this asteroid’s sensor shadow in thirty seconds, we’re fucked.”

Angela stood frozen behind his pilot’s chair, her scorched, dark grey trench coat casting a bat-like shadow across the cramped bridge. She didn’t look like the legendary vanguard commander she was—just a thoroughly exhausted professional dealing with ancient stolen hardware.

Her right eye whirred—a sleek, multi-lens silver military optic that clicked audibly in the quiet cockpit, mapping the pristine white hull of the Obsidian-Corp transport that filled the viewport like an artificial moon. Red digital crosshairs reflected across her pupils, calculating the precise three-millisecond lag in the ship’s radar rotation.

“The gasket will hold, Rory,” Angela said, her voice flat, devoid of any adrenaline. “And if it doesn’t, you won’t have to worry about your pension anymore. It’s a win-win. Keep us in the blind spot.”

“Brilliant. Boss of the year,” Rory muttered, rolling his eyes as he executed a minute, paint-stripping thruster burn to clear a jagged fragment of space debris. “If we die, just think about the hypothetical life insurance payout. Truly, a masterstroke of compassion from the captain’s table.”

From the comm-link on the rusted bulkheads, Dave’s voice chimed in, sounding remarkably cheerful through the static of the lower deck. “Morning, team. Just a quick status update from the airlock—the thermal breach charge is primed, and I’ve successfully wiped down the magnetic clamps. Do we think these corporate boys will invite us for tea before the shooting starts, or should I pack a thermos?”

“Just prep the charge, Dave,” Angela sighed, rubbing the bridge of her nose.

“Copy that, Boss,” Dave replied blithely. “Polite compliance initiated.”

Angela’s cybernetic eye clicked twice, the red crosshairs locking onto a single, unshielded maintenance hatch beneath the transport’s primary engine array. A digital countdown timer began ticking downward in the corner of her vision. 00:05. 00:04. 00:03.

“Rory,” Angela said, her hand resting firmly on the back of his chair.

“I know, I know,” Rory grumbled, his knuckles turning white on the sticks. “Initiating suicide protocol in three, two...”

“Punch it.”

Rory slammed the manual thrusters. The Penny dropped out of the asteroid’s shadow like a thrown brick, her engines roaring as they drew a jagged line of fire across the darkness of deep space.

Instantly, the corporate transport’s automated defense network panicked. The clean white hull erupted with activity as three point-defense turrets dropped from their recesses, tracking The Penny’s trajectory and unleashing a blinding barrage of white plasma fire.

“They’re shooting at us, Ange!” Rory yelled, throwing the ship into a brutal, bone-crushing banking maneuver that made the interior frame groan in protest. “Just in case your fancy eye missed the horrific, lethal light show!”

“They’re tracking three degrees to the left, Rory. They’re missing on purpose to force a break,” Angela said, her vision completely overlaid with a red-tinted tactical HUD highlighting the incoming plasma vectors. “Hold your line. Slide under the secondary shield lip. Now.”

Down in the bowels of the ship, Sarah’s voice cut through the comms, entirely unbothered by the fact that The Penny was currently dodging military-grade artillery. “Hey, Rory? If you could avoid pulling a casual six Gs for five seconds, that’d be great. I just spilled high-stimulant coolant all over my favorite soldering iron, and the floor is starting to dissolve.”

“So are our chances of seeing another day, Sarah!” Rory snapped back, executing a terrifying, tight roll that brought The Penny’s rusted hull so close to the transport’s shielding that blue static sparks danced across their cockpit glass.

With a deafening, metallic CLANG that rattled the crew’s teeth, The Penny’s heavy-duty magnetic boarding clamps slammed onto the corporate transport’s hull, locking them down right over the maintenance hatch. The sudden deceleration threw Angela forward against the console, but she didn’t lose her footing.

“We’re secure,” Rory breathed, his forehead resting against the flight stick. “We are officially attached to a giant, armed bomb. Fucking marvelous.”

Angela unholstered her high-caliber kinetic marksman rifle, checking the chamber with a crisp, mechanical click. “Dave. Sarah. The door is open. It’s payday.”

Before the echo of the impact even faded from the bridge, Angela was down the access ladder, swinging her legs into the lower airlock.

Dave stood directly in front of the primary docking seal, his massive, towering frame silhouetted against the amber warning lights. Despite the alarms wailing through the deckplates, he was casually adjusting the strap on his matte-black cybernetic shoulder armor, humming an old Taylor Swift tune out of key. Beside him, Sarah was furiously tapping a cracked datapad, her face smudged with carbon and her pockets overflowing with loose wiring bundles.

“Magnetic seal is locked tight,” Sarah said, not looking up as the deck groaned beneath them. “The transport’s internal atmospheric pressure is pushing hard against us. When Dave blows this thing, it’s going to vent like a shaken can of pop. Try not to fly out into the void again, yeah?”

Angela stepped into the airlock, her rifle slung tight across her shoulder armor, her trench coat snapping against her boots as the airlock equalized. “Dave. Is the charge set?”

“Primed and ready, Ange,” Dave said, turning around with a wide, disturbingly pleasant smile. He patted the active plasma ring attached to the corporate hull. “I set the burn rate to ‘extra aggressive’ since Rory sounded like he was having a hissy fit up there. Shall we?”

“Blow it,” Angela said.

Dave didn’t flinch. He slapped the manual detonator.

The thermal charge ignited with a silent, blinding flash of superheated blue plasma. The corporate hull liquefied. A circular, five-foot slab of reinforced military steel melted inward, and the sudden, violent depressurization blew a hurricane of thick grey smoke, loose inventory manifests, and plastic storage bins straight past them into the vacuum of space.

“Watch the lip,” Angela barked, her cybernetic eye instantly whirring as she stepped through the smoking, red-hot rim of the breach. “Move, move.”

They dropped down into a sterile, blindingly white maintenance corridor. The contrast was instant—where The Penny was rust and exposed wiring, the Obsidian-Corp transport was all seamless composite panels and polished floors. But the corporate perfection didn’t last long.

Instantly, the ship’s automated defense network went into a full-blown panic. Red emergency strobes flooded the white walls, painting the smoke in bloody lines, and a deafening electronic klaxon began to tear through the air.

“Oh, look at that,” Dave remarked cheerfully, stepping down beside her and racking the slide on his immense kinetic shotgun with a heavy, mechanical clack. “They’ve thrown us a welcome party.”

“Alarms are triggering the sector locks,” Sarah shouted over the din, her fingers blurring across her datapad as she tried to intercept the ship’s internal security feed. “Ange, the main vault is three levels down, but they’re dropping the emergency bulkheads sequentially. If we don’t move now, we’re going to get boxed in like rats.”

“Dave, point. Sarah, stay on my six,” Angela ordered, bringing her rifle up to her shoulder. Her silver optic clicked rapidly, tracking the ceiling tiles fifty meters ahead. “We go hard, we go fast.”

They sprinted down the corridor, their heavy combat boots leaving black scuff marks on the pristine white floors. Ahead of them, a colossal, three-ton steel blast door began to slide down from the ceiling recess, moving with a heavy, hydraulic hiss that threatened to seal the hallway entirely.

“Turret!” Angela yelled.

A sleek, automated security turret dropped from a hidden ceiling panel just behind the closing blast door, its twin barrels instantly spinning up with a high-pitched whine.

“I’ve got it, sweetheart,” Dave boomed. He slid on his knees across the polished floor, his shotgun leveled upward. He fired twice. The kinetic shockwaves rippled through the corridor, the deafening BOOM-BOOM shattering the lighting panels and blowing the turret into a shower of sparks and mangled aluminum.

But the timing was split-seconds off.

The heavy blast door hit the floor with a catastrophic, earth-shaking THUD that vibrated through the entire deck. The locking mechanisms engaged with a heavy, pressurized seal, severing the corridor.

On one side of the thick, reinforced viewport, Dave and Sarah slammed their hands against the glass, Dave immediately pulling his thermite breaching rig from his belt.

Angela stood alone on the far side of the hallway.

Knowing the marksman rifle was too long for point-blank corridor work, she let it hang on its tactical sling and drew her heavy sidearm with a smooth, practiced motion.

Above her, a high-frequency whine echoed. A secondary security grid activated. A web of lethal, humming red laser tripwires zipped across the hallway, boxing her into a ten-foot space. And from the ceiling tiles directly ahead, six heavily armed, humanoid security droids dropped to the floor in perfect synchronization, their glowing orange optical sensors locking onto her chest as their rotary cannons whined to life.

Angela didn’t move a muscle. She didn’t panic. She just held her heavy sidearm in a two-handed low ready, her silver cybernetic eye clicking twice as it mapped the droids’ kinetic armor plates, overlaying blinking stress-points in neon red crosshairs. She keyed the comm-link on her collar with her free thumb.

“Dave,” Angela said, her voice entirely deadpan into the radio. “Tell Sarah to find the door override code. I’m going to be busy for a while. I’ve got a meeting.”

The six droids raised their weapons. The lasers hummed.