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Laura woke up in a fog.
It was dark where she was, and it took several long moments for all her senses to check in and paint a picture of her surroundings. She was in a bed, in a small room. She smelled metal and ozone and burned coffee. She felt a soft but pervasive vibration in the walls, accompanied by a low humming rumble coming from somewhere far below her. Her memories returned in a crashing tidal wave and she bolted upright as the torrent of data washed her confusion away.
She spun to the side and let her feet hit the cold steel deck of the ship. The icy sensation ran up to her knees as nerves now far more sensitive than they had ever been reacted to the temperature differential between her bare feet and the cold floor. She gasped in both surprise and delight as sensations, smells, and sounds all crowded into her perceptions with an intensity that thrilled her.
She stood, and her body seemed lighter. If she did not still have the sharp contrast of the cold floor to remind her, she might have thought she was floating. She swooped across the room with catlike grace until she got to the control panel and keyed up the lights. When the cabin was lit, she saw herself for the first time in the full-length mirror on one wall.
Laura almost did not recognize herself, which she supposed was the whole point. She was still tall, still slender, but no longer a brunette and no longer sharp-featured and angular. Her hair was now a rich auburn and cut into a neat bob. Her face had been softened, with new less-prominent cheekbones and some smoothness to the jawline. Her brow line had been moved to make her eyes appear wider, and her nose was a smaller, softer version of the previous version. It was a different face, but not drastically so. Her eyes were still icy and angry, and her expression wore the same mask of frigid irritation it always did. Her bust and hip size had been increased, but not to an obscene degree. Just enough to give her a different silhouette and further distinguish the new body from her old.
I look like my younger, prettier sister, she acknowledged, I guess that will have to do.
She got dressed in her usual way. But she marvelled at how all the different textiles rubbed against her new nerves. Since she was no longer an executive assistant, she decided not to dress like one. She did not put on one of her customary suits, but rather a practical pair of blue pants with a long-sleeved shirt to match. Sturdy boots followed, and a wide belt with a holster for her favorite side arm.
She grabbed her 8mm Dragoon and slipped it into its home on her left hip. The weapon was large, and the electro-magnetic mass-driver delivered a tungsten slug at 3400 feet-per-second. Heat and recoil made the weapon impractical for most people to use, but her bionic arm was more than capable of wielding the heavy pistol with deadly speed and accuracy.
With a smooth motion, blindingly fast, she drew the pistol and pointed it at her reflection in the mirror. She thumbed the press-point stud and the calculated impact point of the round was encircled by an illuminated reticle in her field of vision. She smiled at the flashing circle surrounding her left eye in the mirror.
Laura replaced the pistol in the holster and decided to try another experiment. She lay face down on the floor and placed her bionic arm in the small of her back. With only the right arm, her human arm, she began to grind out one-arm push-ups. It was awkward at first, but soon she was cranking out reps with smooth strokes. She made it to eighty-one before she had to stop and was extremely pleased.
The operations had been expensive and hasty. There was much risk involved with doing so many at once, so she greeted the obvious success with no small amount of relief. Her new identity had classified her as a security consultant with several years’ experience on the frontier and some mild augmentations.
The Brokerage had back-dated and buried all the necessary licenses so she would not get arrested when scanned, but the haste meant that only minor improvements could be accomplished. She had very much wanted Osteoplast bone enhancement and maybe some better organs, but those took a lot of time and the licensing was exhaustive. She had to settle for a small amount of MyoFiber intra-muscular weave, a press-point ocular implant, and a suite of neurological implants for speed, balance and proprioception.
As it was, she was supposed to be between three and five times as strong as she had been before, limited only by her pain tolerance and her currently available thresholds for rate-coding. Her nervous system was still adapted for her old musculature, but it would learn to contract her new muscles harder and harder as she practiced with them. Over time, she would likely snap her own bones if she didn’t get that Osteoplast upgrade approved, but that was a problem for later.
Speed was harder to estimate. She was faster, that much she knew, but until she had fully acclimated to the new implants, it was impossible to estimate how much so. Twice as fast, easily, she figured, three times, maybe?
Completely satisfied, she left the cabin and made her way to the bridge of the sleek corvette she had acquired for herself. Officially, the fast-attack ship flew a Wayfair flag, and came with its own lettres de marque making it a semi-official warship for that system. It was a fast, modern, and heavily armed little craft with a crew of twenty experienced spacers. A few million extra credits had been burned to make sure the Red Vengeance could punch far in excess of its weight in battle and then outrun anything it couldn’t outfight if it had to.
On the bridge, the Captain rose to greet her with polite deference and indicated she should take a seat in the flag officer’s chair if she liked.
“Is that appropriate?” she had asked archly. “You naval types can be so prickly about protocol.”
The captain smiled politely but without warmth, “You are the master of the ship, ma’am. Even without official rank, you own the flag.”
When she had seated herself and the yeoman had brought her a coffee, the Captain gave her the day’s communiques fresh from the morning’s carrier beam. There was one from Vladivostok with a benign subject, but ‘urgent’ was implied by their personal code phrases embedded in the subject line.
She opened it and read slowly, making sure to apply the correct cypher to the jumble of words on the screen. She kept her breathing slow and her expression impassive. She sipped from her coffee to hide any surprise that might be showing on her new face.
It appeared that Pops was making a dash for one of his bolt holes, and he was on his way to Ariadne at this very moment. That was very convenient, and Laura did not trust convenient things. But it also made perfect sense, which appealed to her need for logic and order.
The two best places to hide things you didn’t want official governments to see were Ariadne and Wayfair. The frontier systems were only recently colonized, and there was little government to speak of beyond loose trading and defense treaties between distant settlements. It’s why she was here, after all, so there really wasn’t anything too surprising about Pops having assets on Ariadne as well. But there was more to be suspicious of. Pops was on a medium-sized freighter, lightly armed and with only one escort. That reeked of foolishness to her. There was no reason not to take a bigger ship and to bring a real escort. Why would he venture this far with so little protection?
Sergei was not going to let the opportunity pass, that much was obvious. The imprudent Pirate saw his chance and he was going to take it. Laura wasn’t sure she could fault him for it, either. No matter what was driving Pops this way, the opportunity was simply too good to ignore. Nonetheless, something about it nagged at her.
Pops plays with emotion. He plays your own emotions as well as his. Is this a trap? Is he playing off my ambition? My anger? She wished real battle was as easy as chess. She could do all the math in her head, but these pieces did not always move in accordance with her calculations. She tried to work it out while sitting there in the flag chair, attempting to look bored.
Pops needs cash and manpower. He is getting choked for both so he runs to one of his back-ups. No surprise there. Few bodyguards could mean that he doesn’t trust the regular crews, or that he is trying to keep the trip a secret.
She pondered the other side of the coin as well.
Or, this is a trap. But how does the trap work? Vlad flies in with a capital ship and what? One freighter and a corvette take on the Kalashnikov? No chance. Maybe an ambush? No, Vlad would spot any other ships in the area, and spoofing registrations doesn’t work on him.
It made no sense. If it was a trap, it was a terrible one. The Kalashnikov would wipe the floor with the Chairman’s escort and that cargo ship had a crew of less than twelve men. Sergei would have five or six hundred pirates and a hold full of Sasori to deploy. It would be a massacre.
She didn’t like it, but she was starting to agree with Sergei. This was one of those opportunities that had to be exploited. Boldness came naturally to the pirate, but it was a new paradigm for Laura. She made a decision and looked up.
“Captain?”
“Aye, ma’am?”
“Would you please set course for the Vespers Gate. Advise the crew that we will rendezvous with Commodore Vladivostok there, and I would prefer it if they do not antagonize him.”
Her fingers darted along the surface of her DataPad and she quickly sent a message over to the comms officer. “Also, I would like this transferred to the Commodore on the next carrier beam, please.”
“Aye ma’am,” the captain responded coolly, then added, “You have the flag, ma’am, you don’t have to ask.”
“Somebody once told me that just saying things politely was not the same thing as being polite,” she smiled, “Don’t let my demeanor fool you, Captain.”
That elicited a genuine chortle from the officer, “Well said, ma’am. Understood. Helm?”
“Aye sir?” a baby-faced officer at the nav console barked in response.
“Make your course for Vespers Station, all available speed.”
“Vespers Station, aye. Flank speed, aye. On your mark sir.”
“Tally ho, ensign,” the captain was still chuckling as the ship accelerated sharply.