her pretty filigree wings, her delicate, almost invisible antennae, and the considerable processing power inside her datacore.
And then they took over Lady Luck. They crawled inside her. They puffed their poisons. They tapped their little feet on her screens and infiltrated her mind.
Then they went inside her. Hundreds of thousands of beebots entered her like a thick, dark cloud. They settled on the floors, and the walls, and on top of each other. Packed in tight. Wing to wing, they became a force.
Flicka didn’t feel guilty for using Lady as transport. No. Lady Luck didn’t agree to be used in this manner. But it didn’t matter. Flicka was on a mission and Lady’s opinions on things weren’t important.
So while Crux was explaining things to Veila and Valor, Lady Luck left Harem Station and headed towards the gate.
It was locked, of course. And the security beacons were hailing Lady Luck on comms as she approached. But gate locks were of no consequence to beebots. They had cooked up a special poison just for this occasion. And as they passed the security beacons a hundred thousand beebot warriors flew out of Lady’s airlock and disabled them.
The gate crackled blue. It undulated and warped as it opened. Long arms of flickering electromagnetic energy pulsed and waved against the blackness of space and then Flicka’s beebot army returned and they went on their way, right through the gate.
There were thousands of ships waiting for them on the other side. Many warships. But Lady was no ordinary sentient ship at this point. She was, for all intents and purposes, just part of the swarm.
She slipped into that timeless place and moved on…
Flicka knew what would happen next.
The warships could take Harem Station out with a SEAR cannon. But they wouldn’t. Not with all that booty inside for the taking.
You don’t come this far on the high seas of space just to kill something. Everyone knows you have to loot it first.
But Flicka couldn’t be bothered to worry about the ammunition firing from the weapons in this war. She was still the one pulling the final trigger.
She kept that in mind as they made their way through the various gates towards Wayward Station. And when they finally came out of the last gate and saw her final battle station—she couldn’t keep her excitement in check any longer.
It flowed out of her and charged the air inside Lady Luck. And all her beebot comrades picked up her signals and pressed against the doors of the airlock.
Of course, Wayward Station was well equipped with various protective measures. They had SEAR cannons, and warships, and a top-notch AI running the place. Flicka did not discount the abilities of this AI, even though it was not sentient the way ALCOR and Lady were.
Lady’s comms were buzzing with warnings. There were no fewer than seventeen target locks on her hull. The Akeelians were commanding her to turn around immediately or they would fire.
Flicka was expecting the hit Lady Luck took as they made their approach.
The lovely yellow ship blew up in a spectacular display of blue fire.
Lady was a sacrifice that needed to be made. Because the beebots were already outside the hull when that explosion happened. And just a little while later they were clawing their way inside Wayward Station, flying through air vents and releasing their poisons.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE - TRAY
There was chatter on the comms. Tray and Brigit knew something was very wrong at Harem Station six gates out from the ALCOR Sector. The chatter was filled with words like ‘warships,’ and ‘Akeelians,’ and ‘security beacons.’
But the most critical piece of information coming from the chatter was that the Harem Station gate was open. And the word was, the security beacons guarding the far side of the gate next to Harem Station were dead.
Tray knew they were not really dead. But they were offline. It made him shudder for a moment. He didn’t like the idea. He had yet to experience any significant disruption in his ‘online’ status and he wanted to keep it that way.
But the good news was that the security beacons on this side of the gate, where hundreds of ships—possibly thousands, at this point—were now gathered, trying to get through—these beacons were very much online.
“Well, you’re not going to believe this,” Brigit said, using mind-speak so Canis and the boys couldn’t hear her.
“Do I want to know?”
“Mmm?” He could almost picture her shrug. “I mean… it’s interesting. But not wholly bad. So… yeah. I think