The Toll Road Between the Stars by M. D. Cooper

Author:M. D. Cooper [Cooper, M. D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Wooden Pen Press
Published: 2017-11-09T00:00:00+00:00

* * * * *

Cargo closed off the latest demand from the station to disembark and surrender the ship. So far it was all bluster, just a prelude to a discussion about exchanging Jessica as a hostage—which would just be a ruse to get them off the ship.

They still had a day or two before things actually escalated.

“This is a dumb plan,” Cargo said around a mouthful of potatoes. “I mean…not our worst by a long stretch, but how long are we going to have to wait? If Derrick shows up first, he’s going to tell The Perry to take our ship. Then we fight back and then what?”

“Well, we’ll either escape, or take the station,” Nance said. “Probably escape. Station taking really isn’t our thing.”

“But how does that help us with RHY?” Finaeus asked. “If we escape, they’ll just chase after us. But if we take the station…”

“This would be a sweet station to control,” Misha added. “All the tariffs and tolls they collect gotta make a person riiiich.”

“We’re not moving in,” Cargo replied with a glower. “But I wonder if we should take the station now. It’s big, but it’s not heavily populated. Maybe ten-thousand people aboard right now.”

<Ten thousand is a lot,> Sabrina said. <And there’s no central AI here for us to convince to help. Though they do have a few aboard. More than a lot of places we’ve come to out here.>

<OK, but their security is garbage,> Hank replied. <I saw what you two did, Erin and Nance. You walked right through it.>

<It was child’s play,> Erin replied. <I suppose we could work out how to take control of this place, shut it down on a night cycle, remove The Perry, undock people we don’t like, and wait for RHY to show.>

“Like Chittering Hawk all over again,” Cargo mused. “I’m not normally the one for the risky play, but that would make it easier to fake out RHY when they show up—if we control the narrative, that is.”

<Oh…wrinkle in the plan,> Sabrina reported. <Our boy Perry has a deadman’s switch on some sort of self-destruct for the station.>

“You’re kidding, right?” Finaeus asked. “What is this? Some ancient vid with Captain Evil or something?”

“I liked those vids,” Cargo replied.

<Then we have a serious problem,> Erin said.

“What—I mean we’re not trying to kill the guy yet,” Nance said.

<Well,> Erin began. <Iris passed a message that Jessica and Trevor were going to take out The Perry. I was going to bring it up, but you all seemed to be in agreement that we should take the station, so I didn’t want to interrupt.>

“Seriously?” Misha asked.

“Yeah, Erin, that’s the sort of thing you need to share!”

<Well, I just found out forty-nine seconds ago. Not like I sat on it for hours.>

“So they’re just going to kill him and take over?” Cargo asked. He couldn’t believe Jessica would do something so reckless. Well, now that he thought about it, he could. Usually she shared her reckless plans, let him get angry about them, and then went off and executed them anyway.

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