/ Chapter 7 /

Teu had another strange dream, but this one felt more normal, as far as dreams go that is. It just had Braids doing the silly dance from the old movie Metropolis while Teu was an immobilised observer, forced to watch as the somewhat menacing dancer drew uncomfortably close. Teu's old instincts warned her about danger and she forced herself awake. 

Blinking in confusion, she wasn't sure whether it had been a nightmare, or something else.

She came to in a small room aboard a ship, at least by the looks of the walls and its moderate size. The others were asleep next to her propped up against the back wall. About two meters away three helmeted people in sleek black body armour stood guard at a door. The somewhat ominously styled armour looked like it was made out of heavy cloth and had plates covering the vital areas. It was a lighter armour variant judging by the vulnerable spots immediately apparent to Teu.

– "Ah, one has woken up... that was quick.", a lazy voice said.

The voice belonged to a fourth man slouching in a chair where he might have been waiting for a while. He was studying his nails, but it looked performative.

He had the usual handsome face and was wearing a tidy suit instead of armour. His aura was that of a person who imagines himself in control and above consequences.

– "We tried to radio you... why didn't you respond?"

She… didn't know what to say and stayed silent, trying to look more dazed than she was.

– "Where is Beutraze?", the man asked.

Oh? They... don't know?

– "Beutraze took something from the Security Bjuro she shouldn't have.", the man continued, as if monologuing.

Huh? Are they talking about the little micro film? It's right there in the projector. They haven't checked? And why hadn't they put restraints on their prisoners?

– "You... are just a worker construct, are you not? What is your serial?", he continued.

Okay, is he playing ignorant? They haven't found their green tops with the numbers?

Just then a guard opened the door and bent in. He didn't wear his helmet, instead exposing a head of ruffled red hair.  

– "The ship is a bit of a mess sir. We're going through the stuff now. Found lots of guns, unused, still in their packaging. And meal wrappers. And... other things.", the guard reported.

– "Oh, and these combat knives. They look new as well, sir.", the guard added, handling the seated mystery man Teu's two knives. Then he left the small room, shutting the door.

The seated man played with the knives and his eyes narrowed.

– "It is a bad idea to leave dangerous tools around worker constructs.", he cautioned slowly.

Teu figured it was about time to say something, so she stumbled up.

– "How did you find the ship?"

– "Counter interrogation? From a worker construct?"

The man looked amused.

– "I'll humor you. We got lucky. Just sent a few ships out to look. Ours was the one to find you. There was no trick.", he said, then he leaned forward and looked serious, "Now, where is Beutraze?"

– "She was... taken... by the... the aliens", Teu started, then fell forward on her knees, looking about to collapse.

The unprepared man didn't have time to react as she closed the distance in a single leap and drove a knee into his chest. He was wearing body armour underneath the suit and her knee could feel it. But the chair fell backwards with the man and she snatched the tumbling knives out of the air, driving one into the top of his skull with a meaty crunch sounding a bit hollow. With her strength and technique, it was like poking an egg shell. The other knife quickly went in and out of the neck of one of the guards. She swung around his body, making the two other guards momentarily hesitant to open fire. Teu however had no hesitation and had already grabbed the guard's rifle with her free hand. It was a small caliber thing which would go through a person but not continue out a ship's hull. 

She drove the guard's sagging body into one of the others, who stumbled, opening an opportunity for Teu to shove the rifle into his armpit and pull the trigger, muffling the sound. She swiftly fell in behind the new body, renewing her armoured meat shield. The last guard was perhaps a woman and worryingly she actually seemed about to ruthlessly open up fire on her comrade. She also covered her neck with one of her arms.

Teu instead threw her knife into the hand holding the rifle. A single shot went off hitting Teu's meat shield. The gun fell to the floor with a clatter just as Teu slipped in, repeating the armpit kill.

The guard's shot hadn't been loud, but might still have been heard. Had Teu been in the woman's shoes she would simply had used the prisoners as deterrence, also shouting a warning loud enough for reinforcements to hear.

Teu waited for thirty seconds in an ambush position at the door. No one came. Had they perhaps thought the interrogator was just scaring the prisoner?

Figuring she had some time, Teu took the chance to wrestle the female guard out of her armoured boots, pants, jacket, gloves and helmet, and then she hastily got into the armour herself, not quite securing every little strap. It took 45 seconds. Thankfully it was nothing like a medieval armour which would need enough time to boil a hot dog and the assistance of a squire to get into.

She immediately exited the room and found herself in a somewhat familiar ship environment. She recognized the garbage chute outside of the door. It looked like she was inside another Wing Courier, but clearly with a different room layout. There was no one in the cockpit seat or the other three rooms. The ship seemed empty, but there must be others. She had seen another guard and that one had mentioned that others were searching her Wing Courier. Not too many, she hoped.

Then she saw that the ship's docking door was open and the ship was connected to another via a 6 meter long orange tube. So they were still in space? If the other guards were over in her ship doing a search, maybe that's why no one heard the shot?

Teu soon saw the redhaired guard making his way across the connecting tube, carrying a stack of green tops. He shot a glance at Teu in her armour.

– "Is something up Ren?", he asked. 

His answer was a knife going into his head. She had yanked the tops away before his body hit the floor. Didn't want to get any blood on them. Teu then dragged the body off to the side and crossed over via the slightly wobbly zero gravity tube.

There was only one more guard assisting in the search on board her Wing Courier. It was another woman. Teu just choked her out, permanently, deciding not to try and get any information out of her, then she started cleaning up the mess.

After having returned things to their places – including her still sleeping shipmates, she stripped any useful stuff from the guards' bodies, gathered all of the corpses and any personal dirty junk into the now empty interrogation room, not wanting to startle the girls when they woke up. She even mopped up the blood.

Feeling that things were somewhat settled, she returned to lean against a table in the girls' cabin to ponder the new and unexpected situation.

She would just pretend nothing much had happened when the others woke up. What would she do with the extra ship though? It seemed like Beutraze's Wing Courier was now being actively pursued. But this imperial Security Bjuro apparently didn't know about Beutraze status as a corpse back on Factory Platform 8790. They might only have visited it, gotten the information about the ship's departure from the Grand Supervisor, then established a search radius.

At least Teu hadn't been caught on Nez'ol's station... that could've gotten real messy with the crowds and local security...

She couldn't think of a way to sell the hot Wing Courier without dealing with pirates. The girls couldn't fly it alone and the ships would get separated after a jump. They couldn't stay here for too long as someone else might have been alerted. It might just be best to set it adrift in a known orbit and potentially return for it at some point. So, they'd have to move into the new Wing Courier and somehow detach the docking tube thing. She had seen a space suit which could be used during the manoeuvre. She'd probably had to space walk or something. 

Ah, a few of the girls were coming to.

–– "Hey there sleepyheads."

They looked confused.

–– "What happened? Did we fall asleep."

–– "Someone actually attacked, but I made them go bye-bye.", she obfuscated.

–– "Peppered them again?"

–– "Pretty much, anyways, they left their ship behind and we're moving into it."

–– "Let's check it out!", she ushered them on, under some protestations.

601 was still happily sleeping and the others were a bit groggy. Teu wanted to get a move on though.

They were quite fascinated by the six meter tube connecting the butt of the two ships. There was no gravity in the tube – only the ships had gravity plating.

Teu had cleaned up the enemy vessel a bit, to make it seem like they were getting a new house.

She wasn't sure they'd appreciate having separate quarters, but they could leave the doors open. What they would be commandeering was actually a Mark 7 Wing Courier. It had a better computer, better sensors, and was outfitted as a troop transport with some extra fuel capacity. Like the Mark 6 it was a sort of rectangular wing shaped slab in battleship gray. 

There were four passenger cabins – or troop cabins in this case – two on each side of the wing. The cabins were just 2.5 by 2.2 meter and had been outfitted to hold two people each. The beds could be folded up to free some space and the wall separating the cabins was a modular thing installed for privacy.

–– "Looks cozier, but also worse.", Firefly opined.

–– "Can we move the furniture that can fit?", Braids wondered.

–– "Sure, let's do that right away. But don't go into this room,", Teu gestured, "It has some pests I still need to get rid off."

–– "Pests? Like the bugs in the magazines?"

–– "Something like that, but a bit larger."

Teu clapped to get them started right away. They seemed to be hesitantly on board with the boarding.

Then she went to find the Mark 7 manual and read up on the whole space tube thing, and working the docking doors from the outside.

After half an hour the girls – now all awake – had moved over most of the stuff. It would've taken less time if they hadn't been goofing around in the new cabins.

Teu had much more to do, and spent another half an hour reading up on the space suit and autopilot programming. When she was ready she set the Mark 6 autopilot to engage on a timer of 60 minutes. The ship was to head out of the system, perpendicular to the planetary plane, then hopefully stop and play dead at 400 S U, assuming a 300 year orbit. Maybe they could come back and get it later?

Fuel transfer was pretty simple since a hose was built into the "Umbilical tube". She was able to top up the Mark 7 which was a bit spent after having travelled here. She kind of forgot to do it before setting the autopilot timer though, and suddenly she only had 30 minutes left to detach the umbilical tube.

Her nice plan was to stuff the tube full with the corpses so she didn't have to tediously space them one by one via the coffin-sized airlock. The macabre hauling could only start efter she had shooed the girls into their cabins with the excuse that she was "doing dangerous space stuff" – which was true, though the cabins weren't actually air tight so everyone would quite unfortunately die if she messed up.

The whole tube operation didn't exactly go as planned. The suit took a while to put on. It was a clunky banded thing in an olive yellow, with a huge helmet dome. After putting it on she used the Mark 7 airlock, closed the external door, waded clumsily through six corpses and other garbage clogging the tube. Once she got over to the Mark 6 she closed its external door, and then she spent some long minutes depressurising the tube while remaining inside. The tube was dimensioned after one of the door standards and had internal handles securing it. Despite her increased strength these just wouldn't come off. She spent far too long wrestling with them until she spotted a little safety button on the handles that needed to be pressed. It was not mentioned in the manual. To obvious to mention – someone had probably thought. It made her unreasonably furious.

After getting the tube loose the two ships began to drift apart. Teu could see the blackness of space as she almost began falling out of the tube along with the corpses and other stuff bumping her helmet dome and snagging on her limbs. Struggling to find purchase, she scrambled back inside and past the corpses. The loose tube had now begun to flail about worryingly, spilling its guts. Eventually she made it back to the Mark 7 and held onto a handle, now a bit nervous. Mark 6's engine was still kind of pointing threateningly in her direction. She had given herself a time limit she thought quite generous. How much time had passed again?  

Thankfully it was now rather simple to detach the tube, however... next she was left holding the thing as it flailed about in space. One was supposed to compact it, kind of like a bellow, but she only had one hand and she wasted more time than she would later admit to on a futile effort to preserve the tube. Eventually she just tossed the unwieldy damn wobbly thing into space and went into the airlock. The airlock filled with a Pssht as she breathed out.

With just a few minutes left she was able to safely get some distance between the ships before the Mark 6 blasted off. She climbed out of the space suit and plopped into the pilot seat just in time to see the ship leave visi-nav range. She squinted at its signature on the sensor screen -- WC6-901-CU. See You later huh, CU?

The girls were currently tearing down the wall separating the cabins on the righthand side of the ship so they could make a larger 2.5 by 4.5 meter room and furnish it more to their liking.

They had returned to their usual skirtless and pantsless style. For some reason Teu had thought they looked a bit wrong in clothes – part of her brain had been conditioned over decades after all. They could just be themselves on the ship she supposed. She would get her own privacy, grabbing a cabin on the lefthand side, and the now emptied interrogation room would be reserved for miscellaneous use.

Teu changed her mind about heading to the shipyard system now that she had a slightly more capable ship. Presently it seemed a much better idea to go via refuelling systems. As far as the Security Bjuro was concerned, maybe this ship was still on its mission looking for Beutraze. She couldn't really roleplay as any of its male crew, so maybe she'd use this "Ren" name the redhaired man had blurted out. She hadn't found IDs on any on the guards or the suit man. Beutraze also hadn't hidden one in her shoe heels like Teu had thought. It was rather strange.

At any rate she couldn't linger here any longer so she tapped on the typewriter-like keys in the cockpit, setting up a jump to a refuelling system 11 lightyears distant. With the faster computer on this Mark 7 they were down to a 46 minute countdown wait. Reading up on it in the manual, she found that it had some sort of fancy "concurrent processor", taking advantage of the fact that some of the jump calculations could be done in parallel.

She checked one of the storage cabinets at the front of the ship and found spare bedsheets neatly rolled up in compressor bags. It made sense to carry extra with the passenger configuration she supposed. Maybe they were disposable -- doing big item laundry onboard was not quite practical.

She tossed three sets into the girls' cabin on the righthand side and then headed over carrying some of her stuff to the lefthand frontward cabin. The location probably had a name in sea-man speak, but she could never remember that sort of thing and it was possibly Earth-specific. 

When she shouldered open the door to what would be her private hidey-hole, Braids was there pantsless in the bottom bunk, laying on her back reading a magazine. Huh? Couldn't she easily fit in the other now larger room? 

Whatever. Teu fetched and extra set of bedding and threw her bedding onto the top bunk along with some reading material. She weirdly felt a little at home again, having triggered a memory of the quarters in the factory platform. After getting up into her bunk she flipped the Imperial Encyclopedia open. She didn't really know much about the imperium, worker constructs, or robots, and felt like she had been operating in the dark. She was about to finally get some answers.

/ End of Chapter /