Long Haul Ch. 02

//Author's Note: Huge thanks to my good friends KatieTay and SkullTitti for their help in translations and tone! This story could not have been possible without their patience and assistance!//

"Huh," Wren said, repeating herself and breaking the long silence. The picture of her, attached to the bottom of the wanted notification, was an old one. Her hair had been longer then, and Wren couldn't recall how long it had been since she'd styled it like that.

"Oh my god," Bonnie said. "Fuck. Fuck!"

"What?"

"I'm sorry!"

"For what?"

"I..." She put her hand over her mouth and shook her head. "I didn't mean for that to happen. I was just trying to get away."

"It's not the end of the world," Wren said with a shrug.

"That is not a joke," Bonnie cried. "These people will ruin your life!"

"Yeah, but that's where I have them beat!" Wren smiled and gestured around. "What are they gonna do?"

"They'll cut you off from everything and everyone you love!"

Wren laughed. "Do I strike you as the kind of woman who keeps a big social circle?"

Bonnie raked her fingers back through her hair and shook her head, fretting wordlessly.

"I live a really small life by design. I go out, I get rocks, and I bring them back. If Jyi Bao doesn't want to buy what I'm selling, then I'll just sell it to someone else!"

"But they'll block you!"

"From what?" Wren laughed. "Flying through space?" Her smile widened. "On a related note, I would love it if you were naked all the time."

"You need to take this seriously!" Bonnie shouted, wrapping her arms more tightly over her nude form.

"The galaxy always needs more materials." Wren bounced out of her chair and stretched. "If I have to sell to someone who can't afford the prices I was getting before then so be it. I was overcharging Jyi Bao anyway."

Bonnie backed out of the way as Wren made for the door, but she continued to follow when Wren headed upstairs. "I don't know how to make you understand that this is a big deal."

"You can't," Wren said over her shoulder, "because it's not."

"They'll hunt you!"

"The galaxy is a big place." Wren bounced up the stairs, gripping at the railing to launch herself just that much faster up to the upper deck. "Oh, shit, and I haven't even told you about my pet project."

"Wren!" Bonnie said, grabbing her by the shoulder and spinning her around. "They will take everything from you."

"They'd have to find me first." Wren tried to turn and continue on her way, but the redhead held her shoulder.

"我只在这旧飞船上待了一个星期, and I already know you're motivated by money. Do they?"

Wren blinked, and a pit started to form in her stomach.

"Because that's what they'll do. They will take ... what you love."

"Um... hey listen," she said, looking down and taking a step back. "Apropos of nothing, I need to go and check on something real fast. Can you wait here?"

Bonnie gave her a stone-faced look as Wren turned and jogged through the galley. The pit grew larger and larger. It was all she could do to keep her composure as she tried to connect to the local system's comm buoy. Even though they'd been drifting at sublight speeds for hours near the edge of the system, it only took a few seconds before Wren was hurriedly attempting to access her bank records.

"Oh fuck," she whispered hoarsely, as she stared in horror at the vaguely-worded error message. "They've been frozen." She attempted to access a different account with a nearly identical number, hoping to mask her original failed login, but her fingers were on automatic, doing just enough to get her through the moment without thinking too far ahead. Even a minute into the future lay ugly truths she was not ready for.

Her entire adult life had been focused on making money so she could retire from it all. The faster the better. She'd bent her considerable skills toward finding a niche need and supplying it in a legitimate way. Not for the money for its own sake, but for what it could afford her: true freedom. An existence outside the rat race. To have that dream dashed in front of her, crushed by a blinking red paragraph of corporate double talk about the importance of her business, was surreal. Disconcerting, dissociating, and also, buried deep down, hilariously ironic.

Appreciation of the irony would come much later. Wren tilted her head as she turned toward the control layout on her left and killed the grav generator.

"Hey," Bonnie shouted, from deeper in the ship. "Hey, what the hell!"

Wren planted her feet on the front of the console and launched herself backwards through the ship. Movement shifted her spatial understanding of the grunting she was hearing and it became clear, as she floated, that Bonnie was in Wren's quarters. She grabbed the bulkhead door and swung herself around the corner, shunting her momentum while losing very little. There, spinning slowly in the middle of the room, with her upper body lost inside of a shirt she couldn't figure out how to put on in null grav, was the object of her vitriol.

Wren reached out to grab the edge of the frame of her closet with the tip of her finger, and spun herself in the air. She put all of her momentum, and all of the force she could muster, into kicking Bonnie square in her ribs and sending the redhead squealing across the room. One tattooed arm finally emerged from a sleeve hole just before she impacted hard with the bulkhead on the other side of the room.

"Wren!" Bonnie shouted. "Stop it!"

The counterforce of the kick sent her rebounding against the deck, though with a bit more grace. Wren was well practiced at finding all the useful handholds in her ship and propelling herself with ease, and after only a few seconds she'd gotten into the corner of the room and launched herself like a blue-haired torpedo. This time, she landed both feet just above Bonnie's center of gravity, and sent the other woman cartwheeling across the room.

Bonnie heaved between words Wren did not understand. Some in Chinese, but most in English and delivered intelligibly; that wasn't the problem. Wren was simply not in a place where she could hear. Nothing registered except the dull thud of contact. Bonnie had finally gotten both of her arms through her sleeves and her head through the neck of her shirt, but couldn't control her rotation. Wren came soaring in and kicked her again directly between the shoulder blades.

Complete numbness. Wren barely felt anything.

That is, until Bonnie grabbed her ankle. For a moment the screaming and shouting became real, but Wren kicked her feet alternately, one and then the other like she was trying to put out a fire, until she broke free. Bonnie continued to clumsily bounce around in the upper corners of the room, eyes rolling wildly, as Wren effortlessly pulled herself out into the hall. To the locker where her maglock boots were.

Tchnk. Tchnk.

Every step rang through the ship in a way Wren appreciated. Her ship. Her property. Hers. And this woman had carelessly jeopardized it all with her mere presence. There was murder in Wren's eyes as she stumped back into her quarters. Bonnie had tried to grab hold of the lamp by the side of her bed, but it hadn't been bolted down very tightly. The frame had been ripped free of the bulkhead and was now floating across the room. Wren casually batted it to the side as she approached.

Bonnie lashed out at her, with arms and with legs, but Wren was careful to stay out of reach. She knew that grappling would not go her way. Bonnie's specific military training had not been a subject of their conversations but it had been strongly implied. Wren's vengeance would be had, and so she was patient. She waited while Bonnie twisted and spun and clawed in vain, until she could get a good angle, and shoved Bonnie head-first into the wall. The sound of the impact was jarring, but distant. Unprocessed.

Wren grabbed the motionless Bonnie by her hair and dragged her, a task made infinitely easier in null grav, through to the small bathroom attached to the cabin. She shut the door and locked it, with the redhead inside, and stumped angrily to the pilot's chair. Her systems were still linked to the comm buoy, and the call only took a fraction of a second to connect.

"Hello Julien."

Julien blinked at her, and when he smiled a moment later, it was thin. Measured. "Hello Wren. This is a surprise."

Words died on her tongue, and Wren tilted her head slightly as she changed tactics. "Is it?"

"Well you don't... you don't... normally call until you're back in system. Right?"

Wren wet her lips and smiled mirthlessly. "Where is my money, Julien?"

"You haven't returned yet. We don't pay on spec. You know that."

"Don't joke with me, Julien. Where is my fucking money."

"I don't know what you're talking about, Wren."

"There are only two people that know where I go hunting for asteroids. I'm one, and I'm looking at the other one."

"What does that have to do with—"

"What did you tell them?"

"Tell who? What are you talking about?"

Wren took a long, slow breath through her nostrils, and smiled. "Do you know why I've never worried that you're close to copying my scanner?" She paused, waiting to see if he answered, and then continued when he said nothing. "Because every time I dock at Luna 2, I spend hours scanning your station. My scanner is so advanced that nobody knows I'm doing it. No alarms are triggered."

Julien's brow creased.

"Six doors, Julien. Six doors are all that stand between you and the void. Do you know how easy it would be for me to hack into that station and open six little doors? Right now?"

His eyes opened wider with every word. "What?!"

"What did you tell them, Julien?"

"It was just a couple higher-ups! They came in, they asked a few questions, and then they left!"

Wren's face hardened. "Let's skip the part where I continue to threaten you at every step, and just assume that my patience is expended. Start talking."

"They made an appointment! Y-y-yesterday! They were on time! They-they wore suits!"

"Who is 'they'?"

"I don't know! I thought they were from R&D! They were asking about your ship, so I assumed we were finally getting close to matching what yours does, but then they just started asking about you."

"About me?"

" 'What are our conversations like.' 'What do I say.' 'What do you say in response.' 'What is your body language like.' "

"That's all?"

"They were in and out in five minutes! They were... polite! I just figured they were auditing my technique since the whole thing hinged on my impressions and accounting of you, but judging by how spooked you are I'd say they got what they were looking for."

'I am not—" Wren bit down on her lip and composed herself. "Start over. From the top."

"Wren, there's not that much more to say! They were here, and then they were gone! They didn't ask about anything else!"

"Fine," Wren snarled. "None of that matters now anyway. I have her."

"Have who?"

"The person they want. You need to..."

On her left, the ladar system started flickering wildly. Wren's eyes widened more with every second as she watched in horror; a new ship had exited t-space practically on top of her. A big one.

"What fresh hell is this?" Wren heard herself muttering in astonishment. Without thinking, she fired up her thrusters, and the Daedalus lurched ahead on its sublight course away from the center of the system. "They're not hailing me, but they're coming around."

"They who?" Julian asked, his brow creased with worry.

Wren turned slowly, staring first at him out of the corner of her eye and then increasing straight on as she came to face him. "It's a police cutter."

"What's the parent corporation?"

Wren grit her teeth as she waited for the ID tag to fill in. What in reality was only microseconds felt like minutes to her. "UPN Lóng Zhōu Seven-Two-Eight."

"Seven-two-eight," Julien repeated, typing furiously. "That's one of ours."

"Julien," Wren growled.

"It wasn't me!" he stammered. "Hang on-hang-on... I can get their... They... Okay. Okay, according to logs, they received a distress call three-point-four hours ago identifying your ship as being present in the RZ-0818 system... aaaand... Fuck!"

"What?"

"They dropped out of t-space and reoriented toward your current location... two minutes ago. Roughly when this call came through. ... Oh my god, they're listening to us now."

"Goodbye Julien," Wren said, as she slammed her fist down to shut off the comm.

"Fuck m—"

Once the comms window disappeared, her sensor readouts shifted to the tactical displays in front of her. Wren's eyes flitted back and forth over the information being fed to her: course predictions, speeds, and the potential loadout of a ship that size. Even at the height of its service life, the Daedalus would have been severely outclassed by the cutter now altering course 125 km distant.

The cutter did not respond to her second hail except to increase its speed and come about.

Cold sweat pebbled on her skin. The cutter was ahead of her, slightly to the port side of her heading, and several kilometers upward. As the cutter banked, its starboard broadside swept toward her. Wren's lungs were burning before she realized that she was holding her breath, and all of the air inside of her left in a rush when the cutter achieved a weapons lock on her. The first salvo of missiles launched immediately.

The mounting bolts in her chair strained as Wren threw the sublight engines into full burn. Distant echoes in the ship said her workspace would likely be a mess, but the inertia was comforting; it meant something was happening. Trying was all she could do.

Her fingers flew as she fired up her scanning system. Every sensor on the fore of the Daedalus ran through the full spectrum, blasting the cutter and all three missiles each with petabytes of conflicting data. Some of it was randomized and some of it was formatted in packets she knew different military systems to use — or at least, they had once upon a time. The previous owner of the Daedalus had not done a particularly thorough job wiping it of classified information and Wren was nothing if not a pack rat. Just because she hadn't foreseen a need to counter military-grade hardware platforms didn't mean she went around deleting useful things. Once she set her jamming plans in motion, all she could do was white-knuckle her pilot's chair as she watched the dots on her readout come close and closer.

And closer.

When the dots were all practically on top of each other, Wren looked out. She only saw them for a moment, twin streaks that passed her by. One above and one below. The third missile passed to her portside out of sight. She quickly turned on her aft sensors as well, just to make sure the missiles didn't re-acquire her, but once done all her focus shifted forward.

Given the way her scanning system was working overtime as a counter-intelligence suite, she couldn't imagine what she looked like to them. For its part, the cutter continued to arc across her path though it fired no more missiles. 85 km distance.

Wren's mind raced. She couldn't use her drones. They weren't fast enough and, even as tiny as they were, the scanners on a UPN ship were likely sophisticated enough to see them coming from dozens of kilometers away. It would take her computer at least ten minutes to make the calculations for any kind of shift into t-space, and she was heading in the wrong direction to try to buy time. The cutter itself was easily seven or eight times the size of the Daedalus, and her chances of—

Wren's eyes popped. She triple checked her theory and groaned. At best, her plan had a slim chance of success, but some light at the end of the tunnel was better than none.

At 50 km, the cutter opened fire with its rail guns, and Wren grinned widely; the closest shots barely passed within a km of her. Her scanner was thoroughly styming their targeting, and the cutter seemed completely dependent on its sensors for any kind of firing solution. They could see her, enough to know roughly where she was going, but not enough to be accurate at that distance. The cutter slowed, fore thrusters firing. It stopped almost directly ahead of her, and Wren redirected every spare ounce of energy she could muster into accelerating past them.

30 km.

20 km.

As she crossed the 10 km mark, the cutter opened up with its gatling cannons. Their targeting was no better, but the cross-section of her bow was a larger target with every passing second and a gatling can afford to miss a few hundred times. Thousands of rounds passed her, with only a couple finding their mark. Though she could feel the kinetic force of the impacts, no system reported any significant damage. A full accounting would have to wait until later.

8 km.

The path of the Daedalus was going to take it within 0.4 km of the cutter, passing just underneath the much larger ship. As she hit the 5 km mark, the cutter fired up its engines and began to turn in preparation of giving chase, but that was precisely when Wren put her last-ditch plan into action. She banked upward hard, exposing the ventral side of her hull. The Daedalus screeched and groaned as she tested the structural integrity of her hull more strenuously than she had ever imagined would be required of it. Several enemy rounds chewed into her ablative armor, then dozens, but the cutter was quick to see the real threat and adjust.

Wren's eyes were glued sideways, watching her asteroid on the aft camera. 20 mm rounds broke off increasingly larger pieces of her asteroid, but it was too late. Her hand hovered over the release button, and with very little beside her own intuition to guide her Wren unleashed her payload from under one kilometer away. The Daedalus immediately lurched ahead as the engines had to propel only 20% of the mass they'd been accelerating only moments before.

The hulking cutter fired every weapon it could as it made an emergency banking maneuver, but breaking the asteroid into pieces only meant that the impact was more like a colossal blast of shotgun pellets than a singular wrecking ball. The starboard side of the cutter crumpled, with the largest chunk of the asteroid carving a hole through the top center. The fore and aft broke apart into separate chunks, with much of the rest of the ship completely disintegrating amidst a hail of rock, metal, and ice.

Wren brought her engines down from their screaming, bleeding-edge thrust and turned so that she could watch, though she immediately regretted it. There was no triumphant explosion to witness, and the final throes of her enemy were not cathartic. The lights went dark in fits and bursts along both intact sections of the police cutter, and it was hard for her not to count those darkening sections as death traps. The sideways-momentum shift alone had likely been so ferocious that any crew not strapped in would have been killed instantly by the walls and bulkheads like flies under a swatter. Those that had survived were now drifting in a powerless honeycomb at the edge of dark space.

Wren stared soberly out of her forward viewport as she started the process of t-space calculations, and was startled ten minutes later when it finished and she was still doing the same thing. Still staring. The engine of the cutter had sputtered several times, driving the aft section roughly toward the solar core, but the nose section had started spinning, with a slight rotation along its axial length, and Wren couldn't pull her eyes away from it. The combined g-forces had to be horrendous. It took a firm shake of her head to disengage from her rubbernecking and get herself somewhere safe.