“You won’t get away with this! You hear me! You won’t get away with this! I’ll have –”

The shouts and cries of vengeance against any and all in earshot were cut off by the gentle hiss of the transporter room doors. With that last prisoner dragged off by Security, the last of the crew of the Orion Syndicate courier vessel Darkblade had finally been transported off the ship and now were safely bound and headed for a nice stay in a state-of-the-art brig for now. The captain had been the last off, holed up in her quarters and only just pried out.

“She seems a friendly sort,” Captain MacIntyre commented, turning back from the door to the two women in the room with him. “You’re still okay with your part of the plan, Lieutenant Levne?” he asked.

“If Commander Sadovu hadn’t already met the Viscount, or any of his staff, I would say this would be ideal work for her,” Selu said, looking to the only other Orion aboard Republic that wasn’t in custody right now.

“Tell me about it, cousin,” Sidda said with a grin. “You’ll be fine. Just think of it as a holodeck program.”

“A holodeck program?” Selu asked, an eyebrow raised in query.

“With the safeties off. And deadly consequences if you get it wrong.” Sidda winked as she cuffed her on the upper arm. “So don’t get it wrong.”

Selu watched Captain MacIntyre’s eye roll and headshake. “I shall endeavour to not get it wrong.”

“Engineering should have made good the damage you did disabling the Orion ship. Honestly, Selu, two shots to disable their whole ship while in this soup. Damn impressive.” The captain’s praise was honest, as evident by the repeated nodding of his head as he spoke. “Think we might have a new training scenario for tactical.”

“When I return, I’ll start crafting one,” Selu replied.

“Boarding parties found it, sir,” the transporter chief said, doing his best to disappear with three senior officers present. “Beaming it over now.”

They weren’t so far into the Archanis Nebula that transporters weren’t useless, just finicky. Range was limited from tens of thousands of kilometres to dozens. To ensure the safety of all using the transporter, each cycle was limited to a few people at a time, not a full pad. And most annoyingly, each cycle was taking much longer as safety checks were done at every step.

And the piece of cargo they were lifting off the Darkblade was deemed precious enough that Republic had closed to a mere kilometre from the Orion ship and was being beamed over all by itself.

As the whine faded, the light dissipated, all that was left on the transporter pad was a clear cylinder two meters tall, with a domed cap, filled with a collection of components that verged on the arcane for what they could do. The ability to craft an entire world, in something not much bigger than a torpedo, beggared the imagination.

“This is Genesis?” Sidda asked as all three of them stepped up to examine the device that was just standing there. “This is what Crashanburn wants? Looks like a glorified paperweight to me.”

“Genesis Mark II, care of Daystrom Institute,” MacIntyre said. “And you haven’t seen this. Have you?”

“Seen what?” Sidda asked, then turned to the transporter chief. “Chief?”

The young man looked down at his console. “Man, this diagnostic sure is interesting, ma’am. Way more than the nothing taking place in front of me.”

“Good man,” Sidda said. “Take five.” The young man didn’t need any further encouragement to disappear after a single nod to Sidda.

“I like him,” Sidda commented. “Good head on his shoulders.”

“I fail to see the point of this,” Selu said. “For a weapon to be useful as a blackmail device, you need to demonstrate its effectiveness. If he ever did that, though, he’d have no leverage, as his only device would be gone. And if the people of Hysperia don’t consent, he’s backed into a position of impotence by hesitancy, or to destroy everything he seeks to claim. As well as become a galactic pariah.”

“If the people of Hysperia do give in, though, he gains an entire population as hostages to stop someone else from acting to remove him from power.” MacIntyre had circled around the Genesis device and stopped, staring at it. “Logic, I’m afraid Lieutenant, won’t help here. He’s likely one of those ‘if I can’t have it, no one can’ sort of villains.”

“Ah, yes.”

“Now we’re not going to have time to make a fake, so you’re just going to have to stall for time.” Sidda had stepped up beside MacIntyre, looking at Selu. “Get to the meeting point, wait for the Hohenzollern. When they arrive, take a team over –”

“As many as I can put on an Orion shuttle,” Selu interrupted. “Stall for time, allow the Viscount to be grandiose. Republic will be nearby and will come as soon as we signal on a coded frequency. You’ll be approaching as stealthily as possible.”

“And once we arrive, we enact my part of the plan,” MacIntyre finished off. “You and your team will be in the grand hall aboard Hohenzollern, ready to back me up should things go sideways. You specifically will be there to rile the Viscount up. We need him to make that one critical mistake.”

“Plan still seems a bit sketchy.” Sidda shuffled from one foot to another, then started to pace a few steps. “Seriously sketchy.”

“Do you trust me?” MacIntyre asked. Four words which instantly brought Sidda to a stop.

Spinning slowly, carefully on her heels, Sidda stared at the captain for a good few seconds, unmoving until a single, slow nod of her head. “Those are my words,” she said, barely above a whisper.

“Do you?” MacIntyre asked.

Another few heartbeats passed before Sidda smiled. “I trust you, boss.”

“Good.” Then MacIntyre turned on Selu. “Trust me, too?”

“Of course, Captain.”

“Good, then get ready to beam over to the Darkblade, Mistress Alemi. May your trade deal with the Hysperians go well.”

As the Captain and Commander moved behind the transporter console, Selu took a spot beside the inanimate Genesis Device, giving it one last look before nodding to her commanding officers.

“Energize.”