18 Mars Tango 3

"You okay, Cap?" I said to Captain. She fiddled with the controls of the fortune while she managed the 2D porn sites she was taking care as a side job. She looked at me for a moment before turning her eyes back on the admin panel of the site she is managing.

"Fine, my headache's gone."

"They didn't force themselves on you, right?"

"I did the forcing," she said tonelessly. "I am bad with girls, do you understand?"

"Because you're like a fingering machine to them? No wonder you got Faye Kyra as a practice buddy."

"Shit, I should stop saying shit from my mouth," she shook her head then widened her eyes like something just died inside of her. There was a sudden coldness. "You know, Faye?"

"I do. Met her in a bar and started going about love and first sight. Bullshit like that. You know her?"

"I know her," she said with this voice that makes my skin crawl. "She's the first woman out of my homeworld I have known. I met her and got me into terrible business. Nix, I rather not involve with her. No way she can be honest when she always got two dicks up hers."

"She did screamed femme fatale."

"So you got into one-night stand with her or something?"

"Nope. I haven't lived long enough to just get into someone that looks and acts like trouble."

"Bullshit. You met Faye Kyra and didn't even to bed her"?"

"Why would I do that? Besides, it happens after the shit we did with that ship. You think I'd have any appetite for that after what we just did?"

"More reason to do it."

"I don't."

Her voice went back to that bland tone. "As long as you don't involve yourself with her. She's a certified shit-stirrer and I don't know how she gets away with some stuff she does."

"And you deal with her? Must be tough."

"Yes, so try not to agree with anything coming out of her mouth."

"I wonder if she was just looking for you." I sat on the co-pilot seat of the Fortuna.

Captain raised her shoulders. "Probably heard that I was free from service. I got a new ship. The Corporation is after me and somehow she probably thinks that I can owe her a favor. The question is, where is she right now? Where did you meet her?"

"Ganymede."

"Oh, good thing we are on mars now. If she's looking for me, then she'll find me."

Could hear something heating somewhere. Got it checked and found some coffee maker that Captain installed. I didn't even know that we had a coffeemaker. "We got something like this?"

"I had it installed."

Opening it, I smelled the burnt beans inside it. No, it was the coffee they grown on the farmlands of mars. Wanted some to rid the booze in me, so I brought the coffee and gave a cup to Captain. Captain switched off the sites she was managing and started sipping on her coffee.

"So I heard you got some job from Henry Jims?"

"It was okay. Just a minor job to earn some pocket money. Well, we can't be here forever in Mars, Captain. Unless you want to offer some peace? General Charlotte wants her ships back, the fucking cheapskates."

"We could abduct her."

My jaw almost flew. I held my head for a second. Trying to understand and process what the fuck she just said. "You want to abduct a General that belonged to the Corporation?"

"Might as well. We don't have to credits to pay for the ships. They'll put an interest and turn us into wage drones. Besides, I won't mention this if I didn't have a plan. I got my network from people I met in my time. How do you think that I could get us out of military service?"

"Let's hear it then, Captain."

Captain pulled files from her data link. From the data link were images of asteroid refineries. On the folders she had, I noticed that there were a lot that came from some brass informants. Most of them had higher ranks than most of the informants on mars. I sometime forget that Captain's a legend outside of her addiction in managing porn sites and having a VR harem.

"Some of my friends told me she's having a meeting with some of her fellow superiors. Four hundred thousand kilometers from mars and that it's her big day. Since she recovered that ship thanks to our help and purge one of the bio-ships that could cause some damage. She's getting her ass praised for her proactive actions."

"Must be nice."

Captain pulled a picture and some article from a site. Several of these were actual footage from the refinery. The rest were on hand pictures from a staff member of goddamn refinery. How in the hell does the Captain get these?

"Your face seems confuse. I got all of this from people who know their way. It may surprise you how people approach me and thanking me for saving them. I don't even know when I did," Captain looked down. Face looking like a statue. Eyes without light.

"That's crazy."

"You finally saying that after the recent things we've done in the past weeks?"

"No, it's entering inside of my head how much shit you have done. I guess augmentations makes the days feel almost nothing these days."

Captain nodded. "Anyway, what we want is General Charlotte. Most of the refinery is well-defended. They garrisoned over four thousand men, not counting the personal guard, and the staff in that refinery. Most of the place is well-guarded. ID checks are everywhere and don't even think about trying to fly in without the proper passes."

A headache was killing me.

"So you want to adduct General Charlotte inside that refinery while knowing all of this?"

"When you have no access, it's impossible. I got some keys and some proper transport. The problem is, if you will come and do this with me. Because even if we keep running away from them. One day they'll catch up and we have to deal with them, eventually. Unless you want to run away from this system and find some mid-level planet on some backwater nation in the Perseus Arm cluster and just wait it out until they forget about us. Make some family and then forget that we ever held a gun. We could also surrender the ships, but I am not doing that."

"With your connections, we could get some ships."

"Nope. No one's that generous. We earned the Carnifex and the Fortuna. It belongs to us now, and I want to speak to this Charlotte and convince her to give us the ships. I know this is stupid, but I rather deal with it this way than back down. Or do you want to go with my proposition of going the Perseus Arm cluster?"

Light came back to Captain's eyes. There was an interest in her eyes I've not seen from her. I wondered if she wanted to hear something genuine coming out of my mouth. Or is this some kind of test that she throwing at me? After the shit we've been discussing, I think that there is still a gap between the Captain and I.

"Cap, I told ya that I'll follow you through hell. To me, I got nothing to live about. All my friends? Buried on some mass grave they place on Begin-01. Who in their right minds would stay sane after all the shit that we've been through? You gave me freedom and without you doing that, I'd still be in some alien-infested planet. Trying my hardest to survive another fucking trip. Then repeat the cycle until I am on some mass grave. I know that so far we have differences. But shit I'll follow you on whatever the fuck crazy shit you're planning. Still better than fight some acid-spitting aliens every day."

"You sure you ain't tired of fighting?"

"Are you?"

Captain stared blankly for a second. "Fighters fight."

"Exactly. Besides, I don't think being in a peaceful planet will do us good. Not when there are still aliens trying to swallow the Andromeda and the Milky Way."

"Well, at least we're still far from that," she switched to the next information. "Before we try anything, we have to switch the security off and abduct her when she's still resting. I have schematics of where she's going to be. I have someone who can take us away after we abduct her and then exit hopefully without triggering a single alarm."

On the projection were the faces of employees and staff who will back us up. Why would they even try to do this shit? Because Captain asked them to back her up. I don't know what kind of hook the Captain has that makes them like this. But she sure got them hooked tight on the lip.

"So that's it? We hope that somehow we can get inside this place without triggering the alarm?"

"Yeah, that's it. I'll have the Carnifex remote controlled. We can have Henry Jims or the Twins do the remote controlling."

"What about the Transponders?"

"We rid the transponders before the act. Well, I can rid of it while I need you dressed in a service suit."

"Weird that they have a service like that."

"No need to be surprised," Captain said with a click of her tongue. "They always do this when it comes to their ass-kissing ceremonies. Make sure that we are on time and doesn't miss a beat. When we don't miss a beat then we're clear. We miss one second then we better not stop and just maintain our cover."

"So that's it?"

"There are many factors that I need to consider, but I'll need some time to refine the plans."

"Captain," I swiveled my seat. "You've been doing these kind of things for how long now?"

"We do this every time. It wasn't all just aliens that we've been handling. We had to deal with human traitors who thinks that they can somehow speak to the aliens. Cults are strange to me knowing what they do in hopes to believe that they can speak of pacifism towards these monsters that don't even consider as meat bags as 'sentient beings' that can be talked. Our language and how we communicate are different and they speak in different ways and their sense of morality is twisted. It's stupid to assume that every sentient life will just be a replica of the human race. They'll have different patterns and movements. Each and single one of them won't be like the aliens. Most of the cultists that I dealt with had this belief. Their leaders are usually insane that to 'capture' them was better than letting their cultist members rage."

Captain had a deadly look. My skin was cold as she speak without a single tone of voice. It was like a text-to-speech machine talking to me. I found it fearsome. It was so menacing to the point that it made my belief to never piss off Captain even stronger.

"I got it. So we do what you planned and watch the timing. Never miss a beat. But that sounds like the final part. What about the preps for the op?"

"These people owe me and that bothers me so I let them plan this. In fact, I wouldn't have given this a single glance if it wasn't for them knowing that the Corporation is hunting me down. So they gave me this plan about three days ago after I sent them a chat about how they tried to down me."

"Man, you have one hell of a network."

Captain looked away. "It's the people that I somehow got to know, worked with, and saved while I was doing my job. I don't know why they think they owe me a favor when in truth I was just in the right place and the right time to help."

The confusion on Captain's voice was rather surprising. Does she know or is she really confuse why they would help their benefactor? But knowing the state of the human world at the moment. It is right for the Captain to be confused.