Chapter 21: Gloria Plucks a Phoenix

Marrow looked at the military officer on his screen with distaste.

"So you are telling me," Marrow said calmly, "that Jon Wintersmith simply flew up to the side of the Tartarus Detention Facility, cut a hole in the side of it, and walked off with the single largest intelligence asset we had?"

"Pretty much," the blonde woman replied with a shit-eating grin.

"Impossible," Marrow said. "He had to have assistance from the inside."

"Nope," the naval commander said cheerfully. "We've reviewed the sensor logs thoroughly. There was absolutely no sign of whatever they used… ever. We only knew they were there when we got breached."

"And they just strolled through the facility completely unopposed?"

The commander laughed.

"I wouldn't exactly call it 'unopposed'," the commander replied with a huge grin. "I think 'unhindered' might be a better term. They were in power armor. None of the internal defenses nor the bots could touch them."

"And what about the actual humans?" Marrow glowered. "They just stood idly by and let it happen?"

"If the turrets and the bots couldn't scratch them," the commander chuckled, "what the hell do you think the staff were going to do besides get themselves killed? They aren't packing anti-tank weapons up there, you know."

"And why aren't they?"

"Because," the commander replied in a very condescending tone, "If you live inside a balloon, you don't go around passing out pins, do you? Besides, they didn't expect walking tanks to show up. The place is designed to handle prisoners, not a military assault by elite operators. Its defense against that sort of thing is supposed to be the squadrons of fighters that patrol the area… Which, of course, only works if we can see them coming."

"I see," Marrow replied, "Thank you for the report."

"Don't thank me, asshole," the commander said with a smile. "If I had my way, you would be the one in there."

"I will bear that in mind, commander."

"You do that," the woman responded and switched off the transmission.

"Yet another one for the list," an elegantly dressed brunette lounging on the couch in Marrow's offices said as the screen went dark.

"Indeed," Marrow replied.

"We're going to have real issues with the Navy," the woman grumbled, "I told the boss a few, heh… 'key individuals' ain't gonna cut it. We needed to purge the whole goddamn thing. To think otherwise is just fucking stupid."

"Stupid?" Marrow replied in a dark tone. "Being so benighted as to pass judgment when one does not fully comprehend Her Ladyship's designs is what is truly 'stupid'. You should choose your words much more carefully, Monarch."

"It's just us Bloodlords in here," she replied, the holographic butterfly tattoos covering her body glimmering in the light. "We can skip the cult bullshit."

"You dare to equate Her Ladyship and all that she has built, all she has achieved, with a cult," Marrow hissed, his eyes narrowing.

"If the shoe fits," Monarch snickered, "And our beloved 'Mother' has been getting pretty goddamn flaky here lately."

"Her Ladyship is not a cult leader, and she is just fine!"

"Really?" Monarch smirked. "Never leaves her chambers? Always clutching at her side where that little puppy cut her? Constantly asking about 'Jon'," Monarch said in a gushing, simpering voice as she caressed her breast. "She's been a bit 'off' ever since she found out that her miracle treatment isn't a miracle, and ever since she has gotten back from that debacle in the Federation, it's gotten about ten times worse, and you know it."

Marrow clenched his jaw.

Monarch laughed a nasty laugh.

"Starting to doubt your god, eh?"

Marrow just snarled. He hated her. He hated her so much.

"Well, one of us has to inform her ladyship of the latest developments," he said, trying to change the subject.

"Could you do it, please?" Monarch sneered. "When she gets all moist over 'her Jon's' latest victory, she won't start touching herself in front of you. I may not be as lucky."

Marrow didn't even bother with a reply. He just turned his back on her and walked out of his office.

***

There are dead systems, and then there are dead systems…

Then, there is Barnard's Star.

The Barnard's Star system is about as "useless" as a solar system can be, an ancient population II star "lost in time" drifting through a much younger and far more metal-rich galaxy. There are plenty of rocks, even a planet or two, but, much like their parent star, very, very metal-poor.

Those rocks are just rocks, not worth the time and expense to mine.

For a brief time, the extreme low metallicity of the system was of interest to gas miners, the purity of the gas giants appealed, and the concentrations of some isotopes were different enough to be worthwhile, but as technology exploded in the young Republic, advances in isotopic separation and refining soon made that insignificant. Zeus and a few others built some small refineries around Barnard-4, a particularly nice gas giant, but interest waned quickly. There was plenty of "room" around Jupiter (not to mention Saturn, Neptune, and Uranus) for literally millions of gas miners and refineries, and even with the truly monstrous production rates the Republic was capable of, they weren't going to empty Jupiter for quite awhile.

Within just a few decades, Barnard's Star became a ghost town. Zeus has one ultra pure refinery that runs intermittently, and one dedicated old gas miner that harvests limited amounts of the incredibly pure hydrogen that the system offers, and a few enterprising independents bought another refinery or two on the cheap (for gigantic production facilities) but most of the refineries have been stripped and shut down. Machinery is cheap in the Republic. Man-hours, however, are not. It was cheaper to abandon the refineries and move the workforce to newer, more productive facilities in Sol.

There is also a small research facility in orbit around the star itself. Barnard's Star is incredibly old, one of the oldest in the galaxy. In fact, Barnard's Star is what was responsible for the Empire discovering the humans in the first place. An Imperial research expedition is what first detected electromagnetic signatures from nearby Sol.

Since it is such an old population II red dwarf, the Republic built a research station dedicated to it. It's quite nice, the nicest such station in known space, and often hosts researchers from all over the galaxy, including some of the more reclusive independent species. There is even an Xx who has called it home for decades, refusing to leave even when war broke out.

Aside from that research installation and the couple of refineries, there isn't much else going on...

Well, except for one tiny, almost insignificant thing.

Those giant empty hulks that used to be refineries make great warehouses, and they are basically in Sol, just four light-years away or so.

That, and the fact that "nobody goes there" was not lost on certain types of people…

People like Patricia Hu.

Over the past century, Red Phoenix Holdings quietly acquired all of the old empty refinery facilities, converting them into a vast "Logistics Support Center", making it their corporate headquarters and primary base of operations, and constructing a number of "secondary transit centers" throughout the outer reaches of Barnard's Star.

A lot of them are perfectly legitimate warehouses.

Others, however…

***

In the dark outer reaches of Barnard's Star, there was a tiny patch of space just a little blacker than the rest of the void.

Gloria crouched happily in an impossibly small cabin. There wasn't a lot of spare room in a Moray, less in a Reaper...

And even less in what she had created.

Still, it was enough. She could get up and almost stretch, go to the bathroom, even actually sleep laying down, sort of.

Most people would consider being shoved in a box that small to be torture. Gloria?

She was the happiest she had been in years!

Perched on the side of what was joking called a "bed", she happily opened a paper bag, pulling out a brightly colored metallic foil clad polymer foam box.

She popped it open to reveal a burger-like sandwich, a "Bix Burger", A loaf of something that was exactly not bread, a pile of genetically-engineered hydroponic force-grown greenery that could no longer be called lettuce, and a patty consisting of a greasy "closely guarded secret". In fact, "What the fuck is a Bix?" was an incredibly successful marketing campaign when she was a kid.

Whatever exactly it was, it was incredibly popular, especially in the belt and outer solar system. Virtually every single Terran starport, transit hub, military base, and anywhere else a ship could park had a Bix kiosk where you could get "whatever the fuck it is" twenty-four hours a day.

Stopping at a Bix was pretty much the very first thing most spacers did when they entered Republic space, and it was the absolute last thing they did before they left, and when they left, they stocked up. One of the wonders of Bix was their packaging. It not only kept things fresh but actually warm (or cold) for days. Their packaging was some of the most advanced technology in the Republic.

She sank her teeth into the bun and smiled as her mouth was flooded with greasy goodness. It was supposedly "bacon", but Gloria consumed real bacon on a fairly regular basis (crime pays after all).

It wasn't bacon. It was Bix, and it was glorious!

She pulled out a Bixshake (they had to stop calling it a milkshake because, you know, fraud) and pierced the membrane on the top of the silver polymer disposable thermal cup with a shimmery holographic foil clad straw. She bought it last night, and it was still perfectly frozen. She happily slurped it up, chewing on the "flavor bits", as she idly looked at a tablet.

She wasn't looking too closely. She had already memorized it. She was mainly using it to track the ship's progress as it coasted, nearly unpowered, through the Barnard's Star System towards her first "friend", a rather innocuous-looking little transit depot perched on top of an asteroid.

In actuality, it (and the hollowed-out asteroid it was sitting on) was perhaps the largest of Patricia Hu's secret warehouses, holding a truly stupid amount of supplies and munitions including (if Bunny's "friends" were correct) a significant portion of her nuclear arsenal.

She idly slurped at her Bixshake and watched her progress towards the first of many targets. She still wasn't too sure about taking this one first. She had wanted to go after the ships before they got too skittish, but "Bunny's friends" assured her that this would have the most significant single impact. Far more importantly, Sheila had enthusiastically agreed.

She shrugged. Intelligence analysis really wasn't her thing. It was best to stick to what she was good at. Read the list. Kill the list.

And, at the top of the list was that rock, and it was getting closer.

With a noisy gurgle, she polished off the Bixshake and rose, her hair brushing the ceiling of the tiny enclosure. She bent and stretched, going through a carefully planned routine to properly stretch and loosen her muscles in such a tiny space. After a few moments of that, she picked up her empty cup and burger package, opened a hopper, and tossed in the empty packaging.

She lifted the padded surface of her bunk, revealing a storage chest filled with many more Bixburgers. With a chagrined little sigh, she started the task of opening each one, setting the burger back into the chest, and tossing the empty package into the hopper, filling it.

She looked at the "naked" burgers sitting in a sad little pile. There was little more depressing than a cold Bix, and reheating them outside of their little homes just wasn't the same. She grabbed one and took a single bite out of it, savoring the cheap synthetic goodness, before replacing it onto the pile.

She opened a compartment to her left and removed a small black satchel which she strapped to her left thigh. She pulled out a button-like device connected to the rest of the satchel by a slender flexible tube and snapped it over a small port near her groin.

The satchel switched on with a quiet beep, and a small screen illuminated, displaying the words, "Auto-injector On. Starting Sterilization Cycle."

Gloria smiled as she felt a burning sensation running down her leg as the device purged the lines and established a good connection to her bloodstream. She loved her little satchel, but it was too bulky to conceal on most of the jobs that she usually did. So it was nice to be able to use it again.

A few seconds later, there was another beep, and the words "Sterilization Complete" briefly appeared before the display switched to a rather disturbing inventory of high-end combat enhancers, neural accelerators, street drugs…

And even a few doses of the actual medical nanites and drugs it was intended to carry.

After jerking the auto-injector satchel back and forth a few times to check if it was secure, Gloria opened another compartment on the wall to reveal a large, fully-enclosed helmet. She placed it over her head, and it locked into her flight suit with an audible "click". Holographic heads-up displays immediately switched on, filling Gloria's vision with graphs and numbers indicating the exact status of her craft.

Smiling a serene smile, she took a few steps to the large flight seat dominating one end of the tiny cabin. She sat and, as the lights in the cabin dimmed to near darkness, the chair automatically swiveled and locked into place in front of the command consoles.

With a little shudder of delight, she activated the control link.

Suddenly, the ship "went away" as augmented reality replaced her "eyes" with the ship's sensors. Her hands instinctively found the controls and as she touched them, a thrill arced through her body.

The waiting was over.

It was time.

***

"So, anyway," Bill said as he lounged in the control center of Red Phoenix Holdings Transit Depot 23, "She was all over me."

"Uh-huh," Marcelle muttered as she read an article on her tablet, "all over you, right."

"No, really!" Bill exclaimed. "She wanted it!"

"And then what?"

"Well, she was just grinding away, breathing heavy in my ear. She was really getting into it, I tell ya!"

"Um, Bill," Marcelle said, looking up from her article. "You know she was a stripper, right?"

"Yeah?"

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"It's her job to-"

She was cut off by a loud alert.

"What the fuck is that?"

Bill stared at the screen for a moment and scoffed.

"Oh, just some trash… Fucking Bix..." he grumbled as he tapped an icon and started navigating some control screens.

"I hate Bix," Marcelle groaned, "Well, I love Bix but their goddamn packages..."

"Yeah, we should go there when we get back to The Nest," Bill replied. "I'm jonesing for a Bixbeque slider bad."

"You're shutting off the point defense, right?" Marcelle asked. "I don't want to hear it from Shelly if they have to do post-engagement maintenance over a fucking burger box."

"What do you think I'm doing, jerking it?" Bill replied as he clicked an icon. "There. Man, I wish we could find out what asshole jettisoned that. It's actually going to hit the shields. They had to have dumped their shit on an approach vector. I could have their license for that!"

Marcelle dropped her tablet.

"It's going to hit?" she asked, her blood starting to chill, "Like actually hit the shields?"

"Yeah, can you believe it?"

"..."

"What?" Bill asked.

"Switch the point defense back on!"

"Over a burger box?"

Marcelle jumped to her feet and started to rush to the console."

"Hey!" Bill objected as a much louder siren rang out.

He spun about, and his eyes widened in horror as a single glowing line appeared on his screen and the words "Hyperspace Event Detected" appeared.

As he started to wildly flail at the controls, Marcelle just stopped and closed her eyes.

It was over.

She couldn't say that her long and wicked life had been "good"…

But she did have fun.

***

When she popped back into real space, Gloria spun her ship about and examined the long-range sensors.

She smiled a happy little smile.

That was a good one.

Humming to herself, she accessed the list…

***

Bloodlord Eguchi stood in front of three hundred soldiers standing in perfect rows as their commander, a middle-aged man in combat fatigues, looked at him nervously.

Eguchi smiled, much to the relief of the other man.

"They pass inspection," he simply said.

"Thank you, Sir!" their commander replied. "I do admit I had my doubts, but these convicts shaped up nicely."

"Former convicts," the bloodlord replied. "All of them completed their sentences, no matter how short they might have turned out to be."

"Yes, sir," the mercenary commander replied with a smirk. "Of course."

"You and your men have proven your effectiveness," Eguchi said. "The next three hundred will be arriving at this facility in one wee-"

Bloodlord Eguchi, the merc, the soldiers, and the entire "refinery" simply ceased to exist, replaced by a ball of fusing hydrogen several times hotter than the surface of the red dwarf they orbited.

***

"Can someone please tell me what the FUCK is going on?" Marrow bellowed as he stormed into a frantic command center.

A youthful appearing raven-haired Asian woman, dressed in a very nice skirt and blazer, angrily strode forward, her normally perfectly coiffured hair askew.

"What part of 'We are getting the shit kicked out of us' are you having problems with, boy?" she snarled.

"Ma'am!" a young male voice shouted. "Depot 47 is gone!"

"FUCK!" the woman shouted and then turned to face the room. "Did we get ANYTHING?"

"No, ma'am," a blonde woman replied in a nervous voice. "Just a missile appearing out of the void and then a hyperspace flare. No sensor data of any use."

"And does EVERYONE now know not to switch off their point defense if they see a fucking burger box?"

"Yes, Lady Bai." the blonde replied. "We sent out a priority alert."

"Burger box?" Marrow asked.

"They fucking Bix'ed us." the woman replied.

"What?" Marrow asked, his anger replaced with genuine confusion.

"It's an old Navy trick." Bloodlord Bai replied in annoyance.

"If it is such an old trick," Marrow asked, "Then why are your people falling for it?"

Bai screamed obscenities in Mandarin at him and started to turn away.

Marrow reached out and grabbed her shoulder.

Bloodlord Bai and everyone else in the command center froze as silence fell.

"You might want to consider your next action very carefully," Bai hissed, keeping her back to Marrow.

"And so should you," Marrow replied as he removed his hand. "I tolerate a certain level of insubordination out of respect for your abilities and out of my fondness for you, but you WILL answer my questions, understand… Ms. Bai?"

"...They fall for it because it works," Bai said, keeping her back to him. "Bix Burger packaging is made of very advanced materials and is very good at reflecting thermal radiation, along with most of the electromagnetic spectrum. A lot of AI's will misidentify it as either an incoming energetic projectile, a radar jammer, or simply think it is bigger and more massive than it actually is and will engage it with point defense weaponry. That means spending bullets, interceptor missiles, or usage cycles on an energy weapon to deal with a shield-level threat. Most operators will opt to temporarily switch off point defense to prevent this. Our attackers know it."

"Attackers?"

"There is no way a single ship could be engaging this many targets this quickly," Bai replied.

"And you mean to tell me that no point defense system available in the Republic can see through this… garbage?"

"Oh, the top shelf military ones can as well as several others that can easily be obtained on the grey market," Bai smiled, "If only someone had mentioned this before… Would you like to see the emails?"

Marrow scowled.

"Get everything we have in the air. Find them!" he snarled.

"Get everything in the air!" Bai gasped, holding her head in astonishment. "Oh my God! Why didn't I think of that? Hey! Everybody! Get everything in the air, NOW! Thank you, Bloodlord! Thank you for your profound wisdom." she sneered.

"That will be quite enough, Bai," Marrow said in a cold voice. "You waste time with this tomfoolery when you should be-"

"Waste time?" Bai snapped. "The only waste of time here is-"

Bai fell silent as a quiet "ping" issued from a speaker somewhere in the room.

Bai just closed her eyes.

"Where?" she asked the room.

"Relay station twelve," the blonde replied.

"How many ships?"

"Eight," the blonde said helplessly, "Including the Raptor."

"Arban?" Bai asked, her voice shaking slightly.

"Bloodlord Baatar was on board, ma'am," the blonde said quietly.

Bai stiffened.

"I see..." she said after a few moments.

"Do you," Marrow asked, choosing his words carefully, "need to be relieved?"

Bai glared at him.

"Very well then," Marrow said a few seconds later as he clasped Bai's shoulder, much more gently this time, "If there is anything I can do that isn't a 'waste of time', let me know."

Bai just silently nodded.

As Marrow departed, Bai looked up.

"Marrow," she said quietly.

"Yes, Bai?"

"They know exactly where to hit us. They could know about here as well. You should take Her Ladyship and go."

Marrow quietly nodded.

"Good hunting, Bai," Marrow said, drawing his blade and raising it in a salute.

"You too, Marrow."

As he left, Bai turned to face the room, tears starting to form in her eyes.

"Find those assholes!" she snarled. "Find them!"

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