Sliding Reality: Chapter 7 Part 4 of 4 (Patreon)

He muttered a curse, as the cruiser fired across the station. Boarding shuttles cut a trail from the cruiser to the station without a care. "Fucking pirates." Luke hissed as they boarded, speeding it up They started to haul containers away from the station, loading the Cruiser.

Another wormhole appeared and a small half-moon ship exited. It fired a missile back into the wormhole and opened fire on the Cruiser with a eleven small missiles.

The Cruiser wasn’t ready, CIWS focused on defending the ship, taking out eight of the missiles. Turning them into clouds instead of explosions.

Three struck the Rukian Co-op, penetrating the station as the Cruiser returned fire on the small ship with its rail cannons.

The small ship was torn apart with the strikes, bleeding liquids and air out into space, something sparked and the ship detonated.

Shuttles returned to the Cruiser rapidly, it accelerated away from the station and fired a missile.

The nuclear missile struck the station, it had to be nuclear to create that much destruction, turning the station to nothing more than expanding debris.

Luke let out a shaky breath, pausing it all, pausing Ramirez in cold shock glued to his own screens in his ship.

He slumped back into his chair, looking at it all. He re-wound the clip and watched the station blow up again, when the ships landed and left. It left him cold and numb.

I need to get this information out there. He rubbed his hands with a tense hand, hearing the laughter an chatter from the kitchen as the rest of his family had day, talking about what they’d wanted to do for the day on the station.

He was tempted to take the information and send it out the different policing forces, to the different shipping traders and to the press.

If I put out this information it is going to affect more than just me.

Luke sent the information to his screen and slaved the readouts from Dahlia getting out of his seatgot out of his seat and pushed off from it towards the kitchen, grabbing the bar above the door, activating his mag boots and landing in the kitchen area.

"Looking for some snacks?" Adeline said from where she was sitting next to his father. Her smile dulled and her eyes narrowed at his expression. "What happened?"

"The co-op at Rukian, its gone. I need you to all look at something," Luke sent the information packet to them all. "Ramirez sent this to me a few days ago and told me to not open it until today." He took a seat next to Marissa, with Joey in the corner.

They opened their screens and looked at the information. Luke sat back, closing his eyes and thinking. I can pass this through Jynx to Stuart and Brad so they know. They can pass it to the other factions. Then Jynx can help me get the information to the people that will put it out as fast as possible.

He heard the gasps and hisses around the table as they reached certain points. His dad had wrapped his arm around Adeline who leaned into his embrace.

"Mother fuckers," Stephen quietly cursed with a thread of anger that made something deep within Luke quiver and lower his head.

"This, this is real?" Adeline asked. The laughter and smiles had been forgotten, replaced with pale faces of fear and anger.

"Yeah, by what I can see, all the time stamps, its a full log dump," Luke said.

"Has all the markers," Marissa said, looking up from her screen.

"That small ship doesn't look like any ship I have seen before," Stephen rubbed his stubble. “What I don’t get is those missiles, they didn’t blow up. They hit the station and just, nothing.”

"Me either," Marissa said, Adeline shook her head too. For spacers, identifying ships was second nature to them.

"If you don't know what kind of ship it is that means that its really uncommon or its not been seen before." A kernel of an idea rose in Luke's mind. "Which means that it's probably not from the human sphere."

"Well where else could it," Stephen cut off his words and his eyes widened. "You think its the builders?"

"The builders sent us a ship already and that doesn't look like its from Sphere World.” Luke shook his head.

Stephen’s face tightened. “Then it must be some kind of proto-type by another faction. Some kind of shadow war. They could have been targeting the Cruiser as a test and the Rukian Station just got in the way."

His words lay heavy around the dining table. Luke was thankful just being near them, feeling stronger by their closeness, instead of irritated. "Look, I want to take this to the authorities, take it to the press, but I know that doing so will affect all of us."

Stephen grunted in approval.

"What was your plan?"

"I have a contact that knows Brad Lee and Stuart Martin, the ones on Sphere World. I want to send them this information so they know who they are dealing with. I can also get this out to the feeds. My friend also has contacts with mainly gaming feeds, but there are some that work the main news feeds too. Then I was thinking of sending it to the policing forces." Luke shrugged.

"We'll have to send it to the trading network, they're going to want to know."

"Elmoria," Stephen growled.

Adeline gripped his arm and looked at him, sharing something in her look, causing him to relax and nod.

"Elmoria? That was big news, one of the larger stations trying to settle a system, they were looking at terraforming a planet with asteroid bombardment, had all kinds of fuel and materials?" Marissa said.

"Yeah, their reactor blew up, and took out the entire station." Joey filled her in, still studying his screen. “Some people said that the connection cut out before the station went up.”

"You think?" Luke asked.

"There has always been a rumor that the Federation participate in piracy, most say it to slight them and say that they can't build anything themselves. They do have some innovators, but not many and only in the upper echelons. Still they are relatively small compared to other groups and they don't allow others to enter their systems easily. They require a lot of high grade gear to remain competitive. They are always looking for more resources." Stephen said. "You were right, if you take this information live, then the Federation are going to do everything they can to make sure that you can't speak. Or get your to take this all back and say it is some hoax."

Stephen was looking above their heads, eyes narrowed in thought. "We're going to need to head out of port, need to go to a system where we have some friends and we can stay out of trouble, lay low while this is going on."

"Uncle Raffi?" Adeline asked.

Stephen gave a lopsided grin. "Yeah, we might just have to go pay the smuggler a visit."

Luke and Marissa frowned and leaned forward.

"Uncle Raffi is a smuggler?" Marissa beat him to it.

"He gets things to people, medicine, machines, a bit of booze here and there, no drugs or weapons or that kind of thing. Still high priced items that people would find it hard in other places," Adeline said.

"He's your godfather though?"

"Well my parents were customers of his for a really long time, how do you think grandad kept getting that rum he liked? It certainly wasn't from the store on the next asteroid," Adeline grinned.

"Adeline you find out where the old smuggler is hiding. Tonight, we’ll need to offload the freight we took on and can’t deliver and head out on our original time. Marissa, Joey you two start prepping the ship to move, make sure that we have supplies and parts for a year and a half long haul, top the tanks, get us extra rations and water supply. If you want new clothes and sanitary supplies, get them here and now." Stephen said.

"He's in Korzh, we can get fuel there, there are some stations I know that would be fine keeping us off of the books." Adeline said.

"We’ll blind jump, I don’t want to spend the time hopping from warpgate to warpgate.” Adeline nodded sharply, Stephen turning to his children. “Right before we jump, Luke you start sending out your messages," Stephen's words were rapid fire focused. "I'll help you Luke I have a few contacts of my own that would be interested in this information and see if they can do something about the Federation. Us traders might be spread out among the stars, but we're still a tight knit community. We don't leave anyone behind."