Hardwired

chapter six.

A blast, that should have been deflected against our shields, rocked the ship just as I placed my hand on the scanner that opened the door to the command deck. "What the fuck is happening?" I bellowed as I stormed in, marching past Huxtun who was standing by the doorway waiting to brief me.

My second in command wasn't wearing his helmet, revealing eyes identical to my own and his black hair hung in waves at his shoulders. He was a good fighter, fierce and loyal to the mission of the IEC. He was probably the best second I'd ever had, my previous two retiring after finding their mates. "A hostile ship approached our stern from a bolt hole and must have attached some type of scrambler. Delan can't figure out how they connected it to our system but he thinks they sent someone adrift who did it through an external port. Whatever it is disabled our defense and weapons systems. Gerik is below performing a manual reset which will hopefully fix the systems."

I looked over Delan's shoulder at the holoscreen he was typing ferociously on, reading over the lines of code as it scrolled past. "How long until it's completed?"

"Sixty seconds," Delan replied, eyes staying focused on the screen and not even looking at me. "They uploaded a virus, Sir. Whatever it is, didn't flag our systems until it was too late."

I clenched my fist and resisted the urge to punch something.

Or someone.

Namely the stupid fucking captain of whatever ship dared to fire on mine. "Have they attempted communication with our ship?"

"If they've tried we wouldn't know. That virus took out our external communications and the identification systems has also been affected," Delan informed gravely, his eyes still not leaving screen as his fingers continued to tap away and I could sense the shame radiating off him.

Good. The security expert should be ashamed. He had one job. One. Fucking Job. To ensure the safety of our ship's systems and make sure this type of thing had happened. Before this moment, I'd never heard of such a thing happening.

I didn't resist the urge anymore. I let my fist fly and it slammed against the side of the control panel, the metal denting under the force of my fist. The second fist landed in the same spot, depressing the metal even more.

My men didn't move. They didn't blink. They didn't even fucking breath.

They knew better.

I was their Commander. I could have them arrested and discharged from the IEC over this incident. Depending on what exactly was happening I might discharge the whole crew. I left the command deck for thirty minutes and everything goes to shit.

Snarling at them, I gritted out, "Is there anything they didn't completely fuck?"

"We can still manually operate the ship, Sir," Huxtun's tone was grim, his jaw clenched as if he fully expected me to hit him next, "and communicate internally."

I took a deep breath, trying to level myself. "You can't hit your men," I reminded myself even though I wanted to. Instead, I walked over to my station and tried to access the navigation system but the holoscreen only flickered with glitched code. When the ship rocked with another blow I cursed aloud and sat in my pilot's chair.

The ship swayed again but this time it was different, there was no explosion or blast and the movement was gentler. I could see the nose of the other ship from my position on the command deck.

They were attempting to dock my ship.

Fucking. Dock. Me.

Never in my decades-long career had any criminal attempted to dock an IEC ship. No one had the stupidity to even try.

Yet these fucking idiots of unknown origins didn't seem to have any hesitation.

I flipped a switch and took manual control of the ship, jerking forward and dislodging their dock. I turned the ship so I could manually see their tail numbers. Normally, the ship's navigational system would read the signal all ships outputted with information but I didn't have a system to do that anymore. "I want those systems up now and get those fucking numbers into the navigation the second it comes online. I want to know who the fuck is on that ship."

"We're rebooting the entire system now," Gerik announced from the hatch on the floor, "Thirty seconds and we should have access to our systems."

The other ship fired a laser blast at us and I maneuvered left but couldn't avoid the next hit. The impact jolted the ship again. The lights turned off and began flashing red and alarms began to blare overhead alerting to critical damage to the ship. "We need our systems now!" I yelled at my crew. The ship was top of the line but was only as good as its weapons and defenses, which were all impacted. Without it, the ship was just a moving pile of metal and with a hit like that I was sure they just sustained significant damage.

"Shields are up!" Delan yelled as they hummed to life, I could see the blue glow engulf the exterior of the ship almost immediately.

"Engage weapons!" I commanded as my holoscreen lit up and showed the main sequence screen.

Gerik cursed from below, banging echoed up from the hatch as if he was hitting something. He then yelled, "They're still down! I don't know what the fuck they did but the weapons system won't engage."

Another blast hit the ship but the shield absorbed most of the impact, only rocking us gently. "We're warping then," I informed as I pressed a few buttons and engaged the warp drive. If I couldn't fight them I had to retreat. I couldn't put the lives of the crew at risk.

Inputting the coordinates for Pharsouk, I cursed to myself. I'd have to explain to the magistrates what happened and hopefully another fleet could be dispatched and intercept the ship that successfully disabled mine. Just as my figure pressed the button to execute the warp my mechanist, Etix, burst in, "Don't warp!"

It was already too late and the ship jerked forward and propelled into warp drive, Etix hit the doorway and I heard Gerik fall and curse from below from the force of the takeoff. Typically, the ship was a steady missile shooting through a wormhole but this time it rocked and swayed eerily.

Something was seriously fucked up.

The ship rattled and sputtered as it exited the drive before jerking a few times as the thrusters died. The command deck holosystems shutting down in a loud whir of electrical equipment as the ship began to float slowly.

My men didn't speak, no one even moved.

I stared out the large window to see a brown and green planet in the distance. It was Galea, a mountainous planet that was sparsely inhabited due to its location on the outskirts of the system. It was off the main shipping routes. The planet that was neutral of the IEC only because it didn't have a formal army and it was parsecs away from Pharsouk. "At least it wasn't a hostile planet." I thought bitterly to myself.

"Status report," I asked, there was a deadly calm to my voice even though I was raging inside.

Huxtun cleared his throat, "Commander, all systems except for internal ones are down again. Weapons have not come back up. Communications are still down. Shields are down." I could hear Etix murmuring something to Huxtun before he added, "We lost several mechanical systems including the warp drive."

Everything was fucked and I knew. I fucking knew...

The human had something to do with this.

She had to have. She was the only variable that was different. We arrest an unregistered human female supposedly stranded and then suddenly a hostile ship takes mine out without any forewarning.

I didn't believe in coincidences and I would make her tell me everything.