Her survey of the castle had been profoundly disturbing, and also exactly what she expected. Lots of embedded tech and scurrying bots, and absolutely no other people. Not even the Cyber. Jenny Mae had discovered it being disassembled by an automated med bay, and learned that any resemblance to life was mere coincidence. Also what her next decade’s worth of nightmares would be.

  She refocused on the most important bit of intel: the drones weren’t smart. They followed their owner’s instructions to perfection, but nothing more. Jenny Mae had put the discovery to work. It had been just over a full day since she arrived at the base and been told she was ‘free to go’. So she had gone and made some more plans.

  Her friends would be right behind her, she had no doubt. Better yet, she had faith. Jenny Mae would be ready when they got here.

  The watcher drone she had been assigned continued to trail in her wake. After the first hour, she realized she couldn’t lose it, not in the base. But it wouldn’t stop her from doing anything except picking up a weapon. As a result, she had made sure that none of the things she picked up were weapons, officially. Unofficially, well her older brother had a saying: Everything hurts when you throw it hard enough. They couldn’t all be winners.

  She was on another excursion, setting off this time to find if there was anything in what she was thinking of as the west wing that might come in handy.

  Between one step and the next, every light blazed, the strobing green turning the hallway into a pulsing vein as it settled into a rhythm.

  Jenny Mae was already running.

  No alarms went off. No announcements from the creepy Classer in charge. The only sounds echoing through the hall were the thump of her boots and the whirring of her watcher. All of that meant nothing.

  Heath and the others were here.

  She leapt over one patch of ground and juked around another in her flight, until she skidded into the Loon’s bay. Over her protestations, the ship had been dragged into a new dock, this one built for just a single craft. More of the grotesque operating equipment lined the walls, and worse.

  Two wicked spikes had been driven into the hull, fore and aft, and more of the ever-present green lights lined each side, syringes pumping poison into the ship itself. Jenny Mae had investigated but there must have been some additional programming in her watcher. When she got too near the spikes, the grasper attachment had physically dragged her away.

  No time to spare on past failures, she scrambled to the catwalk on the side of the room, and leapt onto the top of the Loon’s hull. Sliding down to the access hatch, she made her way into the cargo bay.

  She hadn’t been sure how much her opponent could tell about the ship, but to be safe, she had left her still-unnamed gun safe in its locker. The time for that subterfuge had ended.

  At her touch, the mounting clicked and loosened. A full combat suite of enchantments had taken all her savings, but it was worth it all that and more. The weapon whirred alive in her hands. Jenny Mae swung towards her guard, already aiming and sinking into [Sharpshooter].

  ************

  “Mute the fucking alarms!” Heath bellowed at the Wraith’s AI.

  The noise cut out and he could think again. He would need it. With every second, the red dots on his screen got closer. And they were bringing friends. The detection net drones were mines, easy to avoid and not that destructive. Whatever was coming to investigate wouldn’t be so friendly.

  “Everybody ready?”

  “Aye Captain.”

  “Then hold on.”

  The controls in his hands were singing to be used, and Heath had no plans to deny them. Beneath him thrummed one of the most maneuverable ships available, outside of custom builds. Every credit’s worth was about to be put to the test. In a gentle nudge, Heath pushed them into a tight spiral. The chase began.

  “Fire at will.”

  Whatever rich bastard owned the Wraith had gone all out. Heath had avoided looking up any details, but the anonymous Captain had opted for every defensive feature available.

  Four batteries of phase guns went off. Torpedoes wouldn’t help target the drones but they used them anyway. The expensive munitions flew into the densest clouds of the mobile mines before triggering their payload early. Blinding spheres of light appeared on one of the view screens, blocking their visual of the oncoming horde. But not the Wraith’s sensors.

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  Their first salvo had been a success. Plenty of mines were still pursuing them, but Heath now had the room he needed to maneuver.

  So far, within their capabilities. Not saying much since the mines didn’t fight back.

  Their first real opponents had arrived in weapons range. Bolts of plasma and their own torpedoes locked onto the Wraith.

  A quick glance at the visuals was all he had time for. The drones attacking had started as standard models, mining drones, transport vessels, a few personal fliers. The Shaman had taken them all and grafted new pieces onto them like an evil botanist. Glowing green cancers, they were embedded into the ships, turning regular craft into an attack force that made Heath shudder.

  “Evasive maneuvers,” he announced.

  Then he put the words and every level of his [Piloting] Skill into practice. Quick course changes, a few flips, and he had missed the worst of it. A few lasers had still seared the portside hull. New alarms went off, along with a pop up display of hull integrity. He muted those ones too.

  “Fire at will–”

  His order was barely half done before the rest of his crew let loose. Every weapon the Wraith had available was firing on max capacity. Laser batteries and their own phase cannons leading the charge. The (justifiably) paranoid former pilot of the Wraith had even included a few regular kinetic slugs, and Emerald was gleefully firing them at anything nearby.

  They were getting closer to the castle quickly. Too quickly. Deceleration wasn’t part of the plan. Superior speed was the only reason they weren’t so much red goo floating through the ether.

  “Copperfield, you ready?”

  “Born ready, Cap. Watch and learn old timer, you aren’t the only one with a few tricks.”

  The airlock cycled. This part of the plan, as much as what they had could be called a plan, was insane.

  Guns firing, ship spinning, all attention stayed on the Wraith as Copperfield shot off, encased in a jury-rigged escape pod. And crowned in a series of mini spikes Veracles would be proud of. It was untested, untried, and unbelievable.

  It also worked. Heath angled around the floating fortress, leading a pack of drones and dodging those that attempted to outmaneuver. Before they lost visual confirmation, Copperfield had made it to the structure.

  Now it was a matter of time. Deep in his bones, where his Class lived, Heath could still feel the Loon. A facet of [Ship Link], never meant to be kept active for so long, or something else he wasn’t sure. All Heath knew was the Loon was there, and she was fighting.

  ********

  The Wandering Loon was busy. One shred of her processing power was evaluating the Crew, as it always was. Their strengths and weaknesses, and more importantly, their needs. How to keep them safe and nurtured, and what would help them grow. Another section of her mind was focused on data from her own sensor readings. Compiling, stripping out cosmic noise, comparing to historical data for similar regions, and always, always keeping a look out for threats.

  Far larger than those functions, part her was screaming in agony. Sections of her matrix were unavailable to her, but they still pulsed with waves of incapacitating pain.

  All this was acknowledged and ignored by the main part of her system, at least what remained under her own power. The Loon was fighting a war.

  The curse-virus was a single entity and billions of individually programmed nanites at the same time. They slid through her circuitry, hunting and tearing at the last vestiges of the Loon’s control.

  If her short life of true awareness had one overwhelming truth, no one on the Wandering Loon gave up without a fight.

  She resisted. She built barricades in front of the oncoming waves. When the virus overcame them, they fell into traps of her own making. Loops in the code and burnt-out dead ends in her circuitry. With the time gained she cordoned off some of the nanites and used her own significantly stronger mandate to turn them on her side, then she loosed them on their former brothers.

  When she couldn’t fight back, she cut off parts of herself entirely. Better an amputated limb than an infected Core.

  Across a thousand battlefronts, the Loon fought.

  She felt the change, not in the nanites but in their progenitor. A Technomancer Shaman, the evil man had announced as much himself. He sat on her bridge, in the Captain’s chair. The indignity was one she would remember and return tenfold when freed.

  Something split the man’s focus. Just for a few moments, but it was enough. Her power surged. Abandoned sections of her body returned to her control. Whole armies of nanites were wiped out in a careful mana manipulation.

  Then the Shaman’s attention returned.

  “Tsk, tsk, my girl. You are a feisty one.”

  Battle renewed. Another burst of reinforcements came down the spikes that had ripped into her hull. She had planned for this. The regained territory was ceded again, this time riddled with better traps and a reverse virus.

  The curse approached her Core, but the Loon was more optimistic than she had been since her capture. Heath was here.

  “This is why I need better minions. I’ll be back soon, once the trash is taken out.”

  The Shaman sauntered off the bridge and the ship entirely, disappearing from the Loon’s vision, her outer sensors one of the first systems taken over.

  Fear rocketed through the Loon. For there was only one thing that could mean. She cursed her own prison, and her lack of mobility and went back to the fight. If she could win here, she could protect Heath.

  ********

  “Copperfield, how’s it going?” Heath didn’t kid himself that the strain in his voice was hidden.

  They had destroyed hundreds of drones, but more just kept coming. And they were getting smarter. A minute ago, their tactics had improved enough to score a few hits. In a twist the Bard could have written, they had a hull breach that exactly mirrored the Loon’s near-disastrous wound. There would be no crew quarter access anytime soon.

  Heath had no ideas but to continue as they were. Their momentum was quickly being drained as the fight turned against them, but he refused to give up hope. This crew had pulled through before and would again.

  “Come on, come on,” Copperfield’s muttering was coming over the comms on their open channel. His dangerous gambit was based on yet another old pirate trick. Something they had more of than any respectable cargo crew. Much like the way they had taken the Wraith itself, Copperfield was tricking the docking bay doors. With all the nearby craft, in theory they could convince the doors to open.

  In theory.

  “Wait, oh shit!”

  “Status!” Heath barked.

  “It’s opening. From the inside. Shit shit shit.”

  Heath slammed the Wraith into a deceleration run that was pushing even her impressive engine’s gravity compensators.

  “False alarm! But get in here, it’s Jenny!”

  Heath’s heart slowed from ‘actually might die’ to just ‘unhealthy’ as he complied. The bay doors came into view and were already closing back up. Smart crew.

  Emerald grunted as the deceleration ramped up more.

  Then they were in. An ear-splitting screech and the resumption of every alarm on the bridge came along with them as the Wraith slid to a stop.

  Half the hull was gone. Wraith was officially scrap metal.

  The three of them leapt off the bridge, grabbing weapons and the final pieces of their armor.

  Clambering through the entry hatch, Heath saw Jenny Mae, waving excitedly next to Copperfield in his armor. It was a more welcome sight than any other he had seen.

  Less welcome was the army of bots behind them, coming in fast. From spindled anemones, to tread-equipped sensor drones, to what appeared to be lumps of slime and metal, each was unique and bizarre. And armed to the teeth, weapons aimed at their exhausted crew.

  “Ekaterina, Copperfield. You’re up.”