RavensDagger

  Chapter Thirty - plex

  plex pns were a plex risk.

  So keep your pns simple.

  That was the essential way that most successful armed forces ducted warfare for millenia. Then humanity reached the stars, and suddenly old ideas didn't work out so well.

  This was especially obvious during the first inter-system war.

  Mars ah fought and cwed at each other. Earth trying to recim what they thought of as rightfully theirs. Mars fighting for an independehat they thought they had earned.

  Both sides approached war as a matter of putting simple pns into a.

  Space, however, was infinitely plex. Soldiers on both sides ran out of fuel and were flung into the void. Both sides had ships run out of food, and soldiers starve in their billion-dolr warships. They discovered, to their mutual horror, that rocks going very fast were very dangerous.

  So keeping things simple, as a cept, died an inglorious death.

  Still, there were times where Ivil thought that it was still applicable.

  "So, what's the pn?" Missy asked.

  "These pirates are retively well established," Ivil said with a gesture around herself at the station. This station wasn't top-of-the-line, but it was more impressive than most froations. The pirates were doing well for themselves. "So, I imagihat with all of this wealth, they must have a few private vessels that are worth taking. I think it's only fair that we take from those who would take from us."

  "You... you want to steal a ship?" Twenty-Six asked.

  "I see many ways that could g," Aurora said. "First of all, how do you io steal a ship?"

  "Twenty-Six likely break any security measures on board their ships," Ivil replied easily. "Besides, will they really have that many locks in pce? Missy seemed able to pilot the Held Together just fine, and whatever we take will likely be geions younger and more responsive."

  "It's not that easy to go from one ship to another," Missy said.

  "You 't do it?" Ivil asked.

  Missy's spiraightened. "I didn't say that."

  "Well, there you go then. We find the ship here, clear it out of piratical scum, then leave. Nid simple."

  Aurora shook her head. "No, not so nice or simple," she tered. "The station has defehere are ships around it, and lots of pirates on this station. We'll be gunned down."

  "We'll take a ship with good point defence. In any case, I didn't io leave the station in any shape to retaliate," Ivil replied. "I'm willing to bet that the pirates here are already in a rough state. Punch a few more holes into the station and they'll be too pao care about one ship pulling out, and once we're out and in on's range... we assist the Held Together by making some noise."

  "That seems kind of dangerous," Twenty-Six said.

  Ivil looked at her. "Twenty-Six... we're invading a pirate outpost. This pce is filled to the brim with people who want us all dead or worse. The only safety here is for the few people whom I have decided to protect."

  Twenty-Six smiled slightly. "Thank you," she said. "Um, you're probably right. I wouldn't mind looking at the engineering on some of these pirate ships."

  "I'll let you pick the ship," Ivil promised.

  "And what happens if we do survive and somehow make it out of here?" Aurora asked.

  "Then onwards to Calypso? You had a reason to head that way, no?"

  Aurora paused, then nodded slowly. "Yes. I didn't expect you to still want to move that way, but I wouldn't say no to it. Oher hand, we have other options. Less insane ones."

  "Oh?"

  "We're now in a position to iate. We could ask the pirates to allow us to taeone from outside. A Martian patrol, maybe? Phobos has its own small fleet as well. It's nothing pared to Mars or Earth, but I'm certain it would measure up to some pirates. Or meraries... In any case, we could iate for our own release."

  "That'll never work," Missy said. "That would mean holding off the pirates for however long it takes for your rescuers to show up."

  "'t we?" Aurora asked.

  "Certainly," Ivil said. "But they'll try to sabotage us the eime. They were willing to vent the air out of this se while living crewmates were in it. They'll be trying a lot worse against us if we sit around and wait."

  Missy sighed. "She's right. If we're going to do something, I'd rather it be proactive aructive. If you want to call for help, then we might find a pce to do that along the way."

  Ivil reached over and carefully pced a hand on Aurora's shoulder. "We'll figure this out. I'm certain that we might find a time or pce to put your diplomatic skills to good use." Aurora didn't seem too impressed, but she didn't press the issue. "Alright. Let's head towards the tre of the station. Stay behind me, I'll keep you safe."

  None of the three looked entirely certain about that, but Ivil didn't mind. She had hardly flexed in front of them yet. If everythi well, she wouldn't o.

  Taking the lead, Ivil headed towards one of the bulkheads he back of the room, the same ohe meics had fled down a few long minutes ago. "Do you think you cycle the air in the corridor?" she asked. "We won't want to be in a low-oxygen enviro forever."

  The suits her panions were wearing hardly seemed fit for bat. One puncture and they'd be choking on nothing. That, and while the suits had modern air recyclers and scrubbers, she doubted the effi some of them, and the air tanks they did have--the sort that automatically refilled and repressurised in a pressure-ral enviro--were all small capacity tanks. They had, at best, twenty to thirty minutes of breathable air.

  On arriving at the door, Ivil walked over to the and system o it, then frowned. It was more unfamiliar hardware. " I?" came Twenty-Six from behind her.

  Ivil stepped aside. "Go ahead."

  "I reize it," Twenty-Six said. "It's Jupiter-made. See the rounded handle? All of the stations around Jupiter have passages that act as temporary airlocks."

  "Strange," Aurora said.

  "No, not really. It's additional redundancy. Because a single point of failure means... a lot more pain. Remember the Titahquake."

  That had been a fairly major event, Ivil remembered, a rge teic motion sometime between the first and sed inter-system war. Titan had been well on its way to being a third system-wide power at the time, but the quake had ripped open several stations. Thousands had died, and the disaster relief was slow in ing.

  Even now, decades ter, the moon hadn't regais early momentum.

  Rumour had it that the quake had been triggered by a Core-wielder. A powerful one. One who wanted nothing more than to slow Titan's grorevent a third system-power from appearing. At least, that was the on spiracy theory.

  "Yeah, I cycle it from here," Twenty-Six said. "The other side is still pressurised."

  "Do so, then," Ivil said. "If we fight in rooms that are at omo, then they'll likely be a lot more careful with their fire."

  Twenty-Six tapped two buttons and flicked a small lever. It all seemed very simple when she did it like that. The room hummed, and there was a faint hiss from the other side of the bulkhead.

  "If they know we're ing, then we'll be meeting some resistance," Missy said. "Would this be a good time to e with what we do? Because as much as I like holding my cards close to my chest, I also like not having my chest punched full of holes."

  Ivil raised her eyebrows. "Go on," she said.

  Missy gave her a look, then shook her head. "Sound dampening, aer joints."

  Those were retively weak cores, but irely useless. They were the kind of cores that the Martian navy might hand out to a would-be-Valkyrie to get them started without them having any real power.

  Missy and Ivil both turowards Aurora who stared betweewo. "What?" she asked.

  "If you don't want to reciprocate, that's fine," Ivil said.

  Aurora's eyes narrowed. "How did you know?" she asked.

  "I se," Ivil said.

  "You're rich," Missy replied. "You seem the sort."

  "Wait," Twenty-Six said. "Miss Sterlingworth has a core?"

  Aurroaned. "I don't have anything that would be useful here."

  "Nothing?" Ivil asked. She se least half a dozen cores in Aurora, maybe closer to ten.

  "I regute my body temperature, suppress involuntary reflexes, and see well in the dark. Not night vision, just... better vision in the dark. My nails are tougher too." She crossed her arms. "Happy?"

  "That's all?" Ivil asked.

  "We've been purchasing random, cheap, cores for a while. Just that mue a fair bit. What about you, Miss Ville? Care to share?"

  "Hmm... no, we don't have time for that," Ivil said.

  ***

  RavensDagger

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