She ran through the open hatchway and practically slammed into the bulkhead, dumping her bag as she did. Reorienting herself she turned on the run and headed for the cockpit, slapping the hatch closure button on her way through. What followed was a practised leap that took her legs up over the back of the pilot’s seat and landed her just short of the control column. She was breathing hard as she began flicking switches and pressing buttons with a look of concentration on her face.
The engines were already warm, she’d made sure of that. All she had to do was…
Alarms began blaring. Multiple overheat warnings, inertial field failing, she started to compensate, bring things under control, and then the comm crackled to life.
“McKay, you know you really can’t go far with the docking clamps enabled.”
Her eyes bulged for a second as she looked at the board again. The Master Decouple was blue, all good, but she wasn’t going anywhere…there was nothing else for it. She hit the emergency override and the ship rocked as explosive bolts blew out her docking panels. It was going to cost her a fortune the next time she docked to replace those. More alarms. Master control shifted to amber, and she still wasn’t moving.
“It’s over McKay. We put on the gravitic clamps just for you.”
“Fuck.” she said to no one in particular. For a second she considered letting the engines run and see how big the fireball would be. It didn’t really seem much fun if you were going to be inside it at the time. She lifted a flap on the main board labelled “Purge” and turned the key beneath it before pressing down. The ship shuddered and the sound of an awful lot of incredibly hot gas escaping incredibly quickly rung through the ship. She sat there for a moment after, glumly, she gave the control board a good kick. It didn’t do anything, it didn’t even make her feel better.
There was a knock at the outside of the hatch.
“You gonna open up, or do I get the gas axe?” crackled over the comm.
She looked around. Nothing particularly good for bribes, her flechette gun was good for about 50 rounds but letting loose with that on a station was basically saying you didn’t want to see a Union base again until the heat died down…maybe after a century or two, and that was if you survived. She looked at her bag. Maybe if she just gave it back they’d let her go. She snorted, fat chance of that.
She sighed and got out of the chair, smoothing her hair back she undid the front of her flight suit an unreasonable amount and with a bit of a struggle managed to pull out the sports bra from underneath. After all, she reasoned, it didn’t hurt to show a little flesh, and it had gotten her out of worse scrapes.
She opened the hatch to see two of the local security mob. Both bald, both wearing the same blue jumpsuit with a white bar across that said “Security” across the back, both carrying the standard shipboard stun stick too.
“Well, well, Humpty and Dumpty. Any reason you’ve impounded my ship?”
“Funny, McKay.” said the one on the left. She knew they were sergeants, one named Vickers and the other Hartland but she’d never bothered to figure out which was which. “Any reason at the first sign of docking clamps you blasted 2 tonnes of steel into the inner wall of the docking bay?”
“Must be your gravitics messing with my hull plating, you know how sensitive this old girl is.”
The sergeants pushed past her and began inspecting the ship.
“Hey, you can’t just come in here, you need a warrant!”
“Station’s under martial law, McKay. Ever since the Union lost Beta Hydron to the Ascendancy. We can do what the hell we like.”
Something stuck in her throat at this. Martial law. That wasn’t something she’d known about or even begun to consider. She eyed the hatch, even if she ran where was there to go? She couldn’t very well live out the rest of the war inside the station’s vents and ductways. The place was already full to bursting with every kind of vagrant going and quite few other people beside them.
Humpty opened her storage lockers one by one, finding nothing but a collection of flight suits, tools, and medical supplies. “Really, McKay?” he said, pulling out two flight suits. One was grey with red piping and bore the crest of the Ascendancy, two lions rampant facing in to a blue green world, the other suit was an olive green with the Union’s single yellow star on blue circled by rings of smaller white stars. “Pretty sure this marks you as an Ascendancy sympathiser…”
“I did some jobs for them pre-war, you know how funny those guys are over protocol.” she said, sweat beading on her forehead as Humpty moved closer and closer to her bag.
“You know McKay, if I didn’t know better I’d say you was nervous.” said Dumpty, his eyes locked on her as they had been the whole time Humpty had been searching.
“Hey, I’ve had two security goons burst into my ship, tell me there’s martial law, and that they need to search my ship for….what was it you were looking for again?”
“An excuse.” said Dumpty as he moved up on her a little, pushing up her chin a little with his Stunstick. “Every time you come through here all hell breaks loose. Things go missing, there’s damage to the station, and we get all sorts of stories from the captains of other ships looking for someone who matches your description, but by the time we get here you’re long gone.”
“Hey, what can I say…” Humpty was picking up the bag, her heart was beating a mile a minute, “…my services are in demand, and I have a tight schedule to keep.”
“You know sometimes I do wonder if your services include anything I might be interested in…” Dumpty said, using his stunstick to trace down from her neck, between her breasts, and coming to rest with gentle upward pressure between her thighs. “You’re a bit skinny, short, and blonde for my tastes but I got drunk with a freighter captain once who swore up and down you were an absolute miracle worker…especially with the gravity turned off…”
Internally she had a moment of disgust, but didn’t let it show on her face. She knew who he was talking about. She was glad she’d dumped the shitbag on one of the moons of Mezarite II. Not only was he boring he’d made sure every bad between here and Beta Hydron had a very inflated opinion of his abilities, and a very low estimate of how much it took to get her drunk.
Humpty was putting the bag back down and she mentally sighed with relief, but not before a small blue data module fell out and clattered onto the floor. Humpty bent down and picked it up, not recognising it for a second before his eyes opened wide. “Hey Vickers,” he said, holding the module, “….does this look like…”
“Fuck, it does…MilSpec Union Encryption module.” He turned back to face her and in the same instant pressed the trigger on his Stunstick. McKay convulsed and fell to her knees in an instant, eyes bulging at the voltage that just passed into her crotch. Her head swam as her heart beat out of time and she barely felt the zip tie locking her hands behind her back, or the upward pull on her ponytail that yanked her to her feet and set her moving.
She gulped down air as she moved, barely feeling conscious. She was being dragged through the main docking bays of the station. People were staring. It took her more than a few seconds to realise that with her hands behind her back and the flight suit unzipped to the waist she was now on show to practically everyone, and in no position to do a damn thing about it.
Still dazed she was thrown through an open doorway, and the hatch closed behind her. She struggled to her feet, hands still restrained behind her, only now realising the effect of the Stunstick her left her drooling down her own chest the whole way here. She looked around and quickly realised this wasn’t one of the security cells. She could see Humpty and Dumpty through a small rectangular glass vision port in the door. An Intercom crackled to life, and it took more than a few seconds for her brain to unscramble the words.
“…subject to section 7 Union penal code in a time of War.”
The stun effect wore off quickly. It was a sobering moment. She was in an airlock. She stumbled over to the controls and tried to poke the emergency unlock with her nose.
“It’s no good McKay, we’ve got this on external lockout. No choice. Stolen military grade encryption keys, an Ascendancy flight suit, letting off explosives inside the station when we’re at war. Any last words?”
“Go to hell.”
The lights in the airlock turned red and she struggled against the zip tie, it bit deeply into her wrists but there was nothing she could do about it. She fell to her knees and prepared herself, it wouldn’t even be over quickly. Behind her there was a hiss and the hatch opened.
There was no roar of pressure, no force blowing her out into space. She turned around and saw a dimly lit ship beyond and over the intercom were howls of laughter from Humpty and Dumpty.
“Oh man, you should have seen your face, hoo boy.”
“Absolute classic, just, damn, worth every second.”
McKay stood with all the dignity she could muster and walked over to the still closed hatch. “Very funny, motherfuckers. Now are you going to let me back in and uncuff me or what?”
Humpty looked her in the eyes. “Well, now, seeing as the punishment for stealing what you did aboard a station is being tossed out an airlock I say we leave you in the airlock and go about our day. So long Captain Amanda McKay, and good goddam riddance.”
McKay kicked the door in frustration and was catapulted back into someone she hadn’t even heard approach. She started to look around, now having someone new to scream at when another Stunstick hit her in the throat. This time the setting was high enough that her eyes rolled back into her head and she collapsed onto the deck plate twitching as Humpty and Dumpty howled with laughter once more.