Chapter 01

The blocky yet agile freighter, the Darkstrider, tore through hyperspace on course with its destination. They had confirmed that they would arrive at the system they were headed for, in a few minutes. The pilot turned her attention away from the blue tunneling glow just outside of the cockpit.

"Are you sure about this?" Inari asked Taal'ani, their lone Fel'caan crew mate and resident computer systems specialist. She stood up and stepped away from the pilots' chair, which turned slightly as she stood. The area behind her doubled as both cockpit and bridge on this old freighter. Several wall consoles and podiums lined the walls, each one displaying various readouts of the ship's systems and status.

A luminescent, yellowish-white light lit up the area. The center of the bridge zone, was taken up by a holographic projector which emitted a bluish-white light. The machine displayed still frame shots of a thin and unkempt man in his early forties, with an untrustworthy look about him. Inari Sunara straightened out her red spacers jacket as she approached, her boots clicking on the floor. Scrutinizing the stills, the captain looked certain, but turned to her crew mate for confirmation.

"I checked the vids we pulled from the security systems and cross-referenced them with stills from before." Taal'ani replied in her girlish voice while looking up at her captain.

Even at forty-six, Inari still had both the face and body of a woman at least ten years younger. With classically beautiful features, like that of the ancient film actress; Audrey Hepburn, albeit, much bustier, at an F cup. Dusky skin, dark hair and brown eyes belied her Middle Eastern heritage. She was always striking to look at, a fact well documented by the amount of looks she garnered while they were on shore leave. The simple outfit of dark blue synth-denim pants and bracingly tight tank top was enough to send most men over the edge.

Though the same could be said for Taal'ani as dozens of men looked at her nearly as often. She was a Fel'caan, a race of cat people that looked like the perfect hybridization of human and cat. She had tiger striped fur, a cat like nose and feline features. The cat girl also had the typical teeth associated with cats, through her teeth didn't interfere with her speech. She had dirty blonde hair on her head like humans do, which oddly didn't clash with her fur. It made her all that much more appealing.

Taal'ani's alluring, swaying walk, always drew eyes to her sizable DDD cleavage and massive fifty-three inch ass. Her beauty marked her as an exotic creature as she always stood out wherever they went. Though her six-foot-four frame towered over that of her captains five foot-ten, she knew who was in charge.

Taal'ani would always wear form fitting clothes out in public as she loved the attention. Since they were on the ship, she wore an old torn second-hand t-shirt and baggy cargo pants. She liked to relax when it was just the girls aboard the ship. Her arm computer was displaying the video and still comparison, lining up the faces so they matched.

"So, you are certain it's him?" Inari asked again, her alto tone resonating with someone used to giving commands.

"Positive. Ninety-seven point three percent match it's him." Taal'ani said to her captain, with a look in her green eyes that almost dared the woman to defy her. Inari chuckled to herself as she turned and sat back down in her chair. She knew that muley look in Talon's eyes, which confirmed that she had made sure that there were no mistakes in the man's identity.

Michael Phillips, also known as Rat Faced Mike, was a slippery and weaselly bastard that had a lot of pain coming to him. He was responsible for several brutal murders across dozens of systems and crimes that ranked worse than murder. Though the bounty on his head was considerable, it wasn't the only reason behind their search.

Mike had brutally tortured and murdered the parents of one of Inari's crew. This would be a most satisfactory capture for all of them, one that Inari would relish for a long time. This was also a very personal matter for two of the crew, Natalya and Korsa. Natalya was orphaned as a child and would have fallen victim to Rat Face's darker appetites had Korsa, their medical officer, not arrived and intervened. Though both women were very different in demeanor and species, they were as close as sisters.

Priya, the XO and sharpshooter of the crew, ambled over to inspect the face on the hologram. Pree was Inari's closest and best friend of the whole crew. They served together in the Navy until a certain high-ranking officer wrecked Inari's career. Priya wouldn't let Inari just up and leave without her. They had been thick as thieves since the academy and as far as she was concerned, that was one thing that would never change.

Priya took a swig of cooled water, having just finished a yoga session in her quarters. Her shirt and pants were a riot of colors though dampened by the amount of sweat that was present. Inari eyed her XO in a very appraising manner, remembering Pree's face last night as she licked and sucked her pert little B cups while fingering her to a mind-numbing orgasm. Noticing the reminiscent look on her captain's face, Priya flipped her braid over her shoulder and stuck out her jiggly forty-eight inch ass for Inari to gawk at. She bent over to better look at the detail on Taal'ani's arm computer, her runners squeaking as she walked.

"That's him all right. I recognize the face. Though the last time I saw it, it was etched with pure terror, wasn't it?" as she directed her lilting soprano voice towards an approaching Korsa, while smirking.

Korsa looked at everyone and said in mock surprise, "What? It's not my fault that the boy nearly pissed himself when he saw me charging into the fray."

Korsa, was a Khontar; a race that is genetically similar to humans, but with very notable differences. Four arms, enough physical strength to bend solid steel, oddly colored skin and two to four feet taller than a regular human adult, were the most glaringly obvious differences. Korsa's head was shaped like that of a human, with wide, expressive eyes, which glittered in the color of burnished gold, high cheekbones and a pert nose.

Another unique trait of her race was the ability to change her hair color to whatever shade she wished though it would take an hour before the change was clear. She had gone a bright cobalt blue this time with silver tips, which oddly didn't clash with her deep red skin.

Despite Korsa's size, standing just over eight feet in height, she was perfectly proportioned. She had an ass that matched Taal'ani's in roundness but at seventy-eight inches around, which were encased in a set of tan cut away shorts. She folded both sets of arms beneath her breasts, making her massive N cup threaten to tear apart the black long-sleeved shirt she was wearing.

"Mama K, you would make the most battle-hardened marine shit his pants if he had to stand against you," Natalya stated as she walked around Korsa to better look at everyone and the holo on display. As the ship's engineer she was dressed in dark blue coveralls, which were smudged with grease and coolant. Idly dusting her hands on her clothes and flipping her crest of hair out of her face, Natalya stepped in for a better look, her heavy work boots clanging on the decking.

Giving her adoptive daughter a sassy look she replied with, "Language young lady!"

"Yes mother," Natalya shot back sarcastically, while her musical voice gave over to a bout of laughter. Natalya was a gorgeous chocolate skinned woman whose attributes matched Korsa's, albeit on a smaller scale. Standing at five-foot-nine, with an E cup bust and a forty-one inch ass, she almost looked like a pygmy version of Korsa, minus the second set of arms. The mother /daughter dynamic they had kept them close and was sometimes comical.

"OK, enough!" Inari said while stifling a fit of giggling. "Let's focus and figure out what needs to be done. We don't know much about what we're going to find when we come out of hyperspace, besides a patched-up outpost that's been abandoned since God only knows when. There will be some ships lying about but we don't know how many and what weapon loadout they have."

"We'll be using the stealth drive to get in close, hack their network and then be off," Inari dictated the plan that they had agreed upon.

"Once we have the information we need, we leave and plan our next move from there."

"Nats," Inari said, looking directly at the young woman. "I know that this is personal for you, but we have to maintain the objective. Which is to determine what exactly is going on and what he and his new 'friends' are up to, so we can get that bastard once and for all. He's been ten steps ahead of us this whole time. Let's get ahead of him for once." she finished.

The caramel skinned woman nodded, "I understand Captain. Just as long as we get that weasel bastard, I'll be cool."

Inari smiled warmly looking around at her crew. Though they were all outcasts and different from each other but the adventures and hardships they had endured together had made them something more. They were family.

"OK then. To your stations everyone. We're coming up on the co-ordinates now."

Everyone bolted to their places and readied themselves. Korsa and Priya split up, going left and right, through doorways next to the main corridor. Heading up the ramps at the left and right of the main corridor which led to the topside cannon emplacements. Both women sat in the chairs and activated the laser cannons from their seats.

As they manned the guns, Natalya sprinted back down the main corridor to the engine room, to ensure that there were no hiccups with the stealth drive. She slid down the ladder and bolted to the main console, checking the power levels and connectors.

Inari hit the switch that dropped them out of hyperspace and into real space while Taal'ani set herself into the Zen like state she would need to be in to pull off the hack. Immediately they saw the abandoned station but instead of being adrift in the orbit of the gas giant, it literally was buzzing with activity and lit up like a tree on Christmas.

"Stealth drive engaged. Let's hope that no one picked us up on long range scanners," said Natalya as they closed the distance to the station. Surrounding it was a veritable phalanx of warships. Several light cruisers, a couple handfuls of destroyers, over twenty frigates and converted freighters. Docked with the station and the larger ships, were dozens of fighters. Under normal circumstances this was a collection of ships that would never harmoniously be in the same area, let alone work together.

"How in the hell did they amass such a fleet and how is it they're not shooting each other up right now?" wondered Priya.

"My best guess is that they have a contact that is allowing them to attain the framework of those warships. Though, you are right, the number of them gathered in one place is both startling and troubling." Korsa speculated, her motherly voice tinged with concern.

"Let's hope no one looks out a window once we get close enough," worried Natalya over the intercom.

Inari had to be careful as several groups of ships had clustered together to patrol the immediate area around the abandoned station. They seemed to be in rather sloppy semblance of standard Coalition military formations. Though there were only two patrol groups there were other ships that were spaced out around the station, almost as though they were expecting intruders. Thankfully, they weren't clustered too close together, so they had slipped by with none of the other ships so much as turning in their direction.

"Taal'ani, how much closer?" asked the captain as she took them high above the gathered fleet and over the station.

"I'm picking up a strong signal, just a little closer," she said as she was priming her programs. The stealth drive they were using was something that Natalya had spent years cooking up and had finally made work several weeks ago. The only drawback was it used a ton of energy just to power it. The rest of the non-essential systems had to be powered down or running on minimal power, so they didn't drain the reactor.

"OK, close enough. Start the countdown," Taal'ani told Priya. The XO of the Darkstrider hit the holographic countdown display. Seven minutes and counting before someone detected them or the cyberspace defensive systems were set off.

Thanks to a particular piece of hardware that Taal'ani designed and built into the ship, they could hack into any system anywhere. As long as there was a signal they could latch onto, they would always manage it.

"Found a way in. Silly boys and the games they play," Taal'ani snickered as she piggybacked off a signal that was being used to play a recently popular galaxy wide MMO.

"What's the count?"

"Five twenty-seven" Priya said. "Working my magic ladies. Hold on..." The three-dimensional coding that she had to do was annoyingly complex, but Taal'ani enjoyed a challenge. Thankfully, the system wasn't anything too exotic beyond the standard defensive programs found in the Coalition military. That these pirates had military grade defenses was a little more than troubling, but that was a fact she'd file away for use later. The rotating cipher was easy enough to crack, but time consuming. Just one more rotation, insert the next few lines of code and ....

"I'm in ladies. Time?"

"Two-eighteen! Must be a new record!" Inari said while she kept the Darkstrider in a stable position. Taal'ani smirked to herself and she began her data trawl through the pirates' archives.

"Combing through their files.... lots of personal junk in here.... found them! Initiating download."

"Good work Talon," Inari sighed in relief.

"Also, I got a little something else running while we wait for the download. I hacked the camera system on the station and we should have a live feed streaming to the main holo...now!" Taal'ani said as she finished hitting a sequence of keys. At the last keystroke, the main holoscreen flooded with the various live images of the station.

"Are we recording?" asked Inari.

"Always captain!" Taal'ani piped up.

"Hold up a second!" she shouted, which caused everyone to jump.

"What is it boss?" Priya asked, genuinely concerned at the change in demeanor. Inari selected a feed and sized it to fit the whole screen. On the screen were three men, who appeared to be having a good laugh over something. One of the men, no one recognized but by the way he was attending to the consoles on screen, they guessed that he was one of the station techs. The other two were of more immediate interest to the group.

"There's your confirmation Nats. he's here," said Korsa as she watched Rat Faced Mike sharing a laugh with a slightly rotund older man. He had greasy, slicked black hair, a pointed oiled goatee and wore what appeared to be a.... Confederation military uniform?!? Seeing this man there though had both Inari and Priya seething with rage.

"Captain Joseph Briggs!" Inari spoke with venomous spite.

"He's most definitely the supplier, and I knew he had his hands some shady things, but aiding and abetting pirates?!" Priya said with angry shock laced into her voice.

"Just about done. One last file cache and....." Taal'ani said while still working her computer. On the screen, red lights flashed and all three men looked around, wondering what was going on.