Demise

[Boss]

"Tony, hurry up! If we get caught in here, we're royally screwed." Doug slapped a detonator on the fusion core they were arming in the east wing of Pueblo Station. The other twiddled with a small device affixed to one side of the octagonal column-like device resting in a maintenance shaft, setting a complicated timing device that was cross-linked with the other three such devices, one in each spoke of the station.

The two men were con men-cum-saboteurs-cum-pirates now recently turned extortionists, looking to get their slice of the pie from Ageira. "It's not fair that those bastards should sit on all that lovely cash when a pair of good-looking guys like us starve, right?" That was the sort of rationale they were operating under. Once the settings were locked in, Tony pulled out a small communications unit and opened a predefined link to Ageira Headquarters.

"Hey. How ya doin? Look. We's got some bombs planted in youse pad, Pueblo. Yeah, dat one. We made dem so's dey can't be toined off, 'cept by us. And we ain't gonna. Not unless youse cough up some dough." Here Doug cut in.

"We want ten million credits, wired to account number 462722277899. Oh, you don't believe we've got the bombs? Take a look." With that, he turned the camera towards the fusion core and removed the fuzz plate they were using to obscure their faces.

Tony took a turn talking again. "Youse got an hour ta decide, then we turn dis place inta Pueblo Scrapheap."

*************

On the outskirts of Colorado, a gunboat patrolled alone, following a path that seemed to be determined entirely at random, yet with each turn, it came closer to the besieged Pueblo. A faded and worn nameplate on her bow, pitted and scarred from plasma, laser, tachyon, and particle cannon alike could still be made out. Redemption.

The ship took its sweet time closing on the station, but at last it slowed to a stop fifty meters from the central hub. Thirty-seven minutes after Tony and Doug made their demand, four Marines flung themselves out of the airlock into the abyss and landed on the hull of the station. With them fell a large cutting laser that righted itself and clamped down. One of the Marines flicked the Start switch, and the laser ignited, searing its way through the exterior hull and inside bulkheads.

Forty-three minutes after inception, the Marines dropped into the station itself. Without so much as a hand signal, they split up and began searching the four spokes. One of them located the saboteurs, which was quickly followed by snapping and crunching as bones and spinal columns shattered under the impacts of armor-clad fists. One remained alive long enough for the locations of the devices to be ripped from his mind. The other did not.

With the knowledge of the bomb's resting places, the other Marines swiftly located their own. In perfect unison, they ripped the timers off of the bombs. By this time the Redemption had docked with the station proper and stevedores had begun ferrying crates from stores to hold. When the first marine back to the docking bay arrived with fusion core in tow, nearly a dozen cargo pallets had been loaded onto the gunboat. The other three arrived soon after, but not before the one who had killed Tony and Doug had lifted the comm unit to his face, stared into the camera, and crushed the whole thing in one fist.

The whole event had taken place without a word spoken, and the boarding of the gunboat was no different. As the ship vanished into the murky depths of space again, the cutting laser activated a self-destruct charge that blew a crater in Pueblo's hull.