another computer console. Just as he stepped in front of it the grenade went off, he barely noticed. His vacsuit blocked out most of the sound and shielded his vision from the light. The same wasn't true of the engineering crew who were absolutely disabled.
He quickly called up the ship's registration information. He was aboard the TSS Vesuvius, high priority armed cargo transport. He dug a little deeper and discovered their current assignment. It wasn't secure, the entire crew knew what they were doing there. They were to transport captured scientific research stock to an asteroid work camp.
He had heard of companies using people for scientific research, knew that it was possible that he was subjected to it himself. These people were most likely spared that only to be sent to a massive work camp. There was also a labour force in tow with an acceptable death rate of fifty percent during transit. He checked the security level of the orders again just to be sure and shook his head. Anyone aboard had access to them, he didn't even need to hack in to see them.
My job here is still the same. He thought to himself as he opened the access panel right beside the computer terminal and placed a small high yield explosive inside. He set it for thirty minutes and looked around as he closed the panel.
The engineering crew were still stunned, some just starting to groggily move around. One of them looked straight at the access panel. Jake took two steps over to him, picked him up by the belt and collar then tossed him over the railing so he fell three decks down. Someone across that level of engineering saw his crewmate fall over the side and looked down over the railing after him. Chances were he didn't see Jake, but he waited and observed for a moment just in case.
The crewman never even looked towards the access panel with the bomb behind it. Just to keep them disoriented Jake walked over to the sensory overload grenade, beating a crewman to it and pressed the detonation button again.
The room was flooded with light and sound once more. Jake looked around at the for a moment and shook his head. It might not have been a purely military vessel, but the crew had a military designation, took orders from officers and he would have to treat anyone in his way as though they were an enemy soldier.
He blindly pressed the control to open the elevator doors and the car was still there. He stepped inside and the main power failed. A moment later the lights came on dimly and he mentally crossed his fingers as he pressed the button for the deck eleven. Nothing happened.
He sighed and adjusted the sensors in his suit to scan through the thin metal sheeting of the elevator car. Luckily there was a maintenance space the height of the lift tube. After making a few adjustments to his sidearm he stood back as far as he could and fired at the wall facing the empty space in the shaft. The weak metal almost gave way under the white hot shot spread over a space three quarters of a meter wide. He fired one more time and made a hole large enough to crawl through.
There was no gravity outside of the elevator car, but he still used the ladder to guide himself along and always had one hand on a rung. Even though there was no gravity at the moment, there was always a possibility of it coming back on.
The level he needed was only three levels down and he was relieved to see the standard emergency crank for the doors. After a few pumps of the lever the doors were open enough for him to squeeze through. His sensors told him that there were two armed men down the hall between him and the entrance to the cargo train. They had obviously seen the doors pump open and were waiting for whoever did it to come through. Neither of them were stepping forward to inspect the elevator shaft.
Jake waited for three minutes silently, watching the seconds tick by on the chronometer built into his display and the two men stood stock still with their rifles pointed at the door the entire time. With a sigh he turned the sound dampeners on his suit all the way up, made sure that the rest of the cloak was still functioning then swung through the open doors. He stepped to the side, ducking behind a computer console and waited a moment.
The guards didn't move, they hadn't noticed him. He ran down the hall towards the access doors leading out to the cargo train. The guards were in full military vacsuits. He stopped right between them, took a firm grip of their rifle stocks, yanked them out of their hands and tossed them over his shoulders. He took several steps backwards, drew his sidearm and shot the first in the head. The second ran forward, trying to ram whatever invisible thing was there.
Jake stepped aside, tripped him, knelt down on his back and pressed the barrel of his gun into his shoulder. The guard didn't stop trying to get up so he fired.
“Now you're going to unlock the doors,” Jake ordered.
The guard stopped struggling. Jake stood and let the guard get to his feet. He looked around for a moment, hesitating and favouring his injury.
“I'm here, trust me. I will shoot you in the face if you do not open the door,” the voice coming through the disguiser inside his cloaksuit was not his own, but the twisted, distorted voice of another person entirely.
The guard turned around, walked back to the doorway and stopped.
Jake kicked him hard in the back of the leg, forcing the guard to his knees. “Open it!”
The guard didn't enter a code, but simply pressed the OPEN button.
“No code? You guys really don't care who gets in, do you?”
“We only make sure no one gets out,” replied the guard through his clenched teeth.
“You've reported me, haven't you?”
The guard shook his head vigorously in denial.
“That's all right, in a few minutes none of that will matter. I've planted a bomb in the forward lift. When the power is restored it'll head straight to the bridge and the entire command deck will be destroyed,” he stated ominously before running down the hall leading into the cargo train. He pressed the OPEN button there and the doors parted. The inner airlock doors opened as the outer doors closed.
Jake brought up a security screen on the computer console on the other side and set a restriction code on the door so no one could come after him. The controls to decouple the cargo train from the Vesuvius were standard, and with the pull of a safety lever and the command punched into a console the locks securing the train to the ship released. A few seconds later the thrusters fired, pushing the train slowly away from the Vesuvius so the Samson could get in position and haul the cargo into hyperspace. He turned his cloaksuit off and injected himself with a treatment for radiation poisoning.
The Vesuvius 's main computer was still functioning and the chip he had left in the elevator car still had access. There was no security in place to guard against access on those lines so he began to download their navigational data and cargo manifests. There was something very strange about this job. Even though he knew they were getting paid a premium to do it and not ask questions, he couldn't help investigating.
Cargo
The Samson had no difficulty hooking up to the long cargo train and hauling it into hyperspace. Jake waited the entire time in the forward control car trying to review the data he had retrieved from the ship but the files were encrypted.
He wasn't going inside without a boarding crew. Stephanie took point with Ramirez and Price close behind. “Welcome aboard,” he welcomed quietly.
“Last boarding action sir, I'll miss our time together,” she said casually.
“We'll all miss you chica,” Ramirez commented from behind.
“Do we have hostiles?” She asked Jake.
“We might, the guards they put on the door seemed more worried about what might come out than anyone going in. Better to be safe. I can handle a lot, but even invisibility and in impact armour can't hold back a mob. Did you bring the stunners?”
“Yes sir.”
“Good, sling your rifles and draw those. Hand me one while you're at it.”
They switched from particle rifles to the stun hand guns, slinging the former across their backs and locking them in place. Their vacsuits were provided to them by the Captain. They were the same as his. Sealed from the
