Project Prometheus Ch. 56 - Teaser (Patreon)

Jaesa then employed a few sniffer/tracker programs and sent them out, hoping no one took notice. Since she was inside the system already, the odds were they wouldn’t. Such systems were often looking at anyone trying to gain access from the outside, rather than watching those who were already inside. She allowed herself a small giggle as she got to work, picking up whatever feeds she could find and sending the data out.

“Got anything for us?” Inari questioned over the line.

“Standby,” Jaesa replied as she sent them small data caches, to avoid tripping any system alarms.

“Looks like these bastards have been here for a while! The interior of that ship looks like it’s been lived in for some time!” Lothara commented offhandedly.

“They also have some sort of surveillance system in place outside, monitoring the area around the ship!” Jaesa informed them.

“We know about those and have a plan to handle them once we’re ready to move. What of the location of the slave pens?” Lothara queried.

“From what I can see, they appear to be situated in the cargo hold. Hold up… the callous bastards! They have a jettison program setup that is rigged to the slave pens!! Seems like they don’t want to be caught red-handed if they’re discovered!” Jaesa growled over the line.

“Can you disable it?” Lothara questioned, hoping and praying that this was possible.

“Wait one,” Jaesa told the woman, as the line went quiet. Everyone there couldn’t help but sigh or growl in anger. That people like this existed was one thing, but that they were willing to just space living beings? That was a whole other level of evil and reinforced the strike teams’ desire to end these pieces of scum. A reply sounded on the comms a few minutes later.

“I couldn’t do anything about the program itself without tripping any alarms. But I managed to seize the release mechanism, so it jams the moment they try to use it.”

“That will do. What of sentries inside the ship?” Lothara pressed.

“Already have their locations, loadouts and even who some of them are! Should be uploading to your holo reader!” Jaesa responded.

Moments later, everyone received a ping on their holo readers, with the details that Jaesa had forwarded. Lothara and the other team leaders smiled at this, as this took the guesswork out of the firefight ahead. Now that they knew what to expect, they could execute their attack and not worry about any potential rats escaping.

“All right. We have everything we need. Come on back and we’ll get things started,” Lothara told Jaesa.

“Not yet. I have a little surprise that’s being executed right… now!” Jaesa said with a slight giggle.

“Jaesa, what did you do?” Inari questioned, hoping she didn’t do anything to compromise the mission.

“Set a loop video of all action outside of the ship. I took care to ensure that every movement is as natural as possible with the sentries. One thing I couldn’t take down was their comms, as that would have tipped them off,” Jaesa told the team leaders.

“That is more than we expected! Thank you!” Lothara said over the comms, keeping her voice low. “Remember everyone; keep it quiet. Mark your targets and take them out.”

The crew looked about and marked at least five sentries watching the rear area where the engines were located. They moved into position, each member of the crew marking a target before readying themselves. Korsa and Alex singled out such a sentry, as he was a massive Takharian man that would require the both of them to bring him down. Once they were in the perfect ambush position, they awaited the signal, which came a few seconds later.

“Go.”