10

Demi watched as the ship passed by once again, taunting her. She had more than enough air to last a couple more hours, or so, and she had already cracked the first level of the code. The terminal had a connection to Gal-Net and, for the first time in a long, long time, she gave herself free rein to access as much information as possible. Music, for a start. The latest tunes playing inside her head as she tried to navigate encryption so complicated, she had, unobtrusively, brought in the processing power of several AI moons and planets to her cause.

While she waited for those AI's to calculate the probabilities for the next level of code, she tried to relax, sending out her thoughts throughout the galaxy. She found several hundred million pieces of evidence of corruption by high-ranking politicians, which she squirrelled away for the future. Found out that there was no translation possible between galactic standard language and Planeian, which left her wondering how Friss could possibly understand Lap at all.

Most importantly, she found everything she could about Captain Frisson Packlightly and that everything came to almost a complete zero. School records showed he had hidden talents. So well hidden, that no teacher could identify exactly what he had a talent for. He had left school and joined the Gal-Navy, where his record was dull. He did nothing. Almost literally nothing and had left the Navy with hardly anyone knowing he had even served. And then ... nothing.

The man existed, but he had no criminal record, no work achievements, no relationships. He had simply disappeared. The same for Lap, but even less detailed. Lap, the records said, was a Planeian and that was it. She sensed a pattern and held out hope that this meant Friss could, in actual fact, clear up the terrible misunderstanding at the bar and, if she was lucky, every other crime she had committed.

"Done yet?" The ship had made yet another circuit of the impound yard and Friss' voice crackled in her ear. Or Lap had spoken at the same time. "I thought you were good."

"I'm sorry I'm not working fast enough on the most complicated security system I've ever encountered, in zero-gravity, without a tether to safety, in an EVA suit that has a force field instead of a helmet and the possibility of being found out by several, very powerful and influential AI's, the Imblibdor authorities and who knows how many others! I'll put extra effort on, just for you!" She caught her breath and tried to relax, fist bumping outer space as the next level of encryption fell. "Aren't you bringing attention to yourself? Circling the impound yards like this?"

"Oh, certainly! They've already made several nervous communications wondering what, exactly, they've done to suffer the attentions of the Galactic Navy. We're giving them an intense bout of silence and sensoring them aggressively." As Friss stopped talking, Demi heard Lap rustle and crackle in the background. "Yes. Quite. And we're keeping the focus on us, instead of you. That's a good thing. Apparently. I ..."

If Demi had found herself within an atmosphere, she had no doubts that the sound that would have accompanied the appearance of a speeding skiff rushing past her would have made her jump, or her ears bleed. As it was, the skiff whooshed past without a sound or any wake that would have tossed her around within an atmosphere. The skiff did not look completely under control and it careened and barrelled past, heading towards Zapasnoy, Friss' Gal-Navy corvette.

Without warning, the skiff veered violently to the side as it neared Zapasnoy, smashing into the ship's flanks, causing the engines to flicker and spurt and the entire ship to list to the side. The skiff itself bounced from Zapasnoy's hull, tearing away a good chunk of hull plating, and began to roll, completely out of control, towards the rippling energy barrier of the impound yard's force field.

As soon as the skiff touched the barrier, it began to disintegrate, like a metal candle melting in super-fast forward, sending pieces of the skiff drifting in several directions. Someone ejected from the skiff, the life seat blasting away, the occupant giving the force field two descriptive fingers and howling in silence. They seemed rather pleased with themselves until they smashed into the dorsal section of Zapasnoy, becoming nothing but a smear upon the ship's surface.

"What the hell was that?" Just in time, Demi managed to activate the EVA suit's personal force field as debris from the crash rushed her way, bouncing off the energy barrier surrounding her. "Was that an attack?"

"No. No, it's fine. Just a speed runner that couldn't handle the G-forces." She could imagine Friss waving a dismissive hand at that. "Although ... it could be an opportunity. Don't go anywhere."

The comms switched off and Demi could do nothing but watch as the last remains of the skiff disintegrated against the impound yard force field and the repair systems on Zapasnoy sent out hundreds of drones to begin repairs. With nothing else for her to do, Demi returned to working on the encryption for the next level of the security systems. The final level. Once she cracked that, Friss could finally get his real ship. His real love: Lodka.

Demi knew exactly what a speed runner was. A type of person that valued racing tiny, super-fast ships without any kind of inertial suppressors (a DWAIt Corp 'invention' that allowed space flight without all the accompanying horrors of immediate acceleration to insane speeds, the accompanying deceleration and the unfortunate side-effects of becoming flattened spots of goo on the interior bulkheads of ships). They pushed the boundaries of speed, skimming close to the atmospheres of planets, stars, the surfaces of moons and the occasional Imblibdor impound yard and Gal-Navy corvettes, it seemed.

She couldn't waste any more time considering the recent reduction of idiocy from the galactic gene-pool. There were other, more pressing matters to consider. A particularly belligerent, arrogant and downright mean AI had started to notice that one million-millionth of its processing capacity had become diverted to something other than amassing great swathes of Galactic Credits, land and ancient Earth-That-Was trading cards that, alone, covered most of the wealth generated by several planetary systems.

That AI, Brenda, had turned Demi's way and Demi had to perform some swift disconnects, hiding all evidence of her intrusion and taking one, particularly valuable, gold-foiled, ultra-ultra-rare trading card of something called a 'Bakatchu'. Demi had left orders for that card to be delivered to a certain pizza place on Dendendintukar Minor, repaying an ages-old debt for the finest pizzas Demi had ever had the pleasure to steal.

With a sigh of relief, Demi realised she had covered her tracks well enough. Brenda the AI planet couldn't find her now if she put every ounce of processing power into the search. That meant Demi had to break into, link with and steal the processing power of another AI to make up the shortfall, or they would never break the impound yard's security. While the other AI's continued their incredibly complex calculations, Demi found two AI moons, in the furthest regions of the galaxy who, together, could make up the shortfall. The AI moons were siblings, which made everything easier so long as one sibling didn't use the proverbial bathroom for too long.

The silence from Zapasnoy disturbed her, however. While she continued breaking the code, the repair drones continued unbreaking the ship and the debris from the remains of the speed runner skiff continued to bounce off Demi's personal force field, she couldn't help but wonder if her two erstwhile companions had died, or, worse, decided that once Zapasnoy had completed repairs they would give up the idea of regaining Lodka and retire somewhere relatively peaceful. Like Imblibdor 5 itself.

Thrusters had turned Zapasnoy in an awkward arc, moving the nose of the ship to point towards the force field and Demi wondered if, instead of dying, or considering retirement, Friss had decided to commit suicide against the barrier. When the barrier flickered and then switched off, Zapasnoy sailing through, Demi could have hit someone.

The final encryption fell. She had conquered the impound yard security for no reason.

Still left alone in the inky blackness of space with only an EVA suit to her name and a security console that, when she cracked the code, had shut down completely, severing her connection to Gal-Net, Demi couldn't help but wonder if Friss had left her here to die, her purpose fulfilled. She couldn't put it past the infantile captain, but she had hoped that the inscrutable Planeian might have argued her case.

As she floated in space, keeping a tight grip of the security console, Demi saw several flashes coming from within the impound yard. Using the console to manoeuvre herself to a better vantage point, she looked around the corner, into the impound yard's space. She could see the decaying hulks of a dozen or more space ships, of varying sizes and she knew there were thousands more, out of her sight.

The flashes were explosions, far in the distance, but near enough for Demi to see. A lot of explosions. Too many for them to be accidents and, she surmised, that meant the impound yard's security patrols had learned that Friss was not, in fact, a Gal-Navy captain after all. She didn't know how much more damage Zapasnoy could take and now resigned herself to dying of asphyxiation in, she glanced at the monitor on the arm of the EVA suit, one hour, forty-five minutes and ... thirteen seconds.

Something appeared out of nowhere. Or, at least, appeared to appear out of nowhere. A ship. A huge ship, shaped somewhat like a pear with a tapering bottom end, or, if Demi looked from a different angle, a set of buttocks and a pair of entwined legs. The ship had dropped from incredible speed to zero velocity in less time than Demi could blink.

"How do you like her? She's a beauty, isn't she?" Friss had retrieved his ship and that ship was strange. Just like him. "Keep your arms tight to your body, grappling arm coming your way."

He wasn't lying. The thing that snaked out from the surface of the buttocks shaped ship did, indeed, look like an arm. A long, freakishly flexible arm, and Demi felt more than a little dirty as it grabbed her.