Final approach

They don't know we're here.

Like most transports, their sensor array is essentially a heaping pile of gos-se. While not as bad as, say, the notoriously weak factory-stock array on a Firefly, they weren't much better. Their array could identify a planet without looking out the viewports. Sitting in their baffles as they coasted towards their next destination, Wave Equation wasn't even a ghost. She simply wasn't there.

"We ready?" I said calmly, looking out the front panels at the coasting transport less then our own length away.

General handed me a standard gear box, saying with a vaguely amused smile, "Ribbon charges and pinpoint breachers with command det fusing. Couple of flash bangs just for fun, enough demo putty to crack anything you find inside, and a couple meters of weld-tape. Can det them from your rig, or we can do it remote."

I nodded thanks, fastening the gear box inside one of the pockets on my suit after quickly checking the contents. The box itself wasn't compatible with the suit's thermal and optical damping properties, but the pockets on the suit were designed to take them.

"Ready, love," 'Brina said softly, giving me a kiss on the nose before settling into the second seat with the tactical console. "You know I get nervous doing this, right?"

"I know you do. Also know I wouldn't want anyone else in the Archangel seat." I replied, quietly reassuring her. While never formally trained as a tactical controller, she was damn good at it. Probably came from a vested interest in keeping my skinny ass alive. I gave her a tender kiss on the cheek and left Wave Equation's bridge for the airlock.

While both boats were tearing through the Black at a substantial velocity, relative to each other they were stationary. Unlike in those cheese Space Trooper shows they liked to show on the Cortex, the stars didn't go streaming by, there were no whooshing drive sounds, and everything wasn't lit up so the audience could see what was happening. No. It was silent and dark. Even thirty meters from the transport's belly, without my enhanced optics it was just a faint outline in the Black.

Gently kicking off from the ramp, I drifted across the Black to the stop gently against the transport's underside along her Engineering section. On the flight out, Sabrina'd identified the base model of the transport and refined her assessment as the boat drew within range of our long range passives. Like most Civilian, and quite a few Military, boats, she had weak points that could be exploited with a carefully placed charge. A simple limpet mine strapped to the hull in the right place could have rendered the boat a lifeless hulk, but that wasn't the effect we were going for. We wanted something more surgical. More precise.

That's where General's ribbon charges came in. They looked like a section of thin cord, less then half a meter long, sticky enough to stay attached to a target, but not so much they got stuck to your gear with a pinky-nail sized detonator on one end. There was a way to do a timed 'prime and forget' detonation, but they were intended for command det. Even armed they looked inert. "What, you want people to know the thing's gonna go off?" I'd heard General say once.

That's our boy.

I carefully wrapped two of the ribbon charges to the spots 'Brina had identified for me on their drive section, before moving across the hull to wrap a third around their main antenna coupler. With a single command we'd be able to cripple the ship's main drivers and her communications array. They were hobbled, dead, and mute. They just didn't know it yet.

A few minutes later and I'd maneuvered back down to a maintenance hatch towards the front of the Engineering section by their ground service ports. From here, I could jack into their internal communications system and effectively give Archangel a view into our target.

"Archangel. Patch complete." I said calmly, watching my own Head's Up displaying technical feeds from the transport's onboard service system. Unless they were a couple or orders of magnitude better than it appeared, they still didn't know we were here.

"Gotcha. Looks like six? No. Seven people aboard. Their internals are luh-suh, but you look clear to enter." I could hear Sabrina keeping herself calm. She was worried. It was natural. Archangel was a tough role. You had to care for your asset, but still remain detached enough to send them into harm's way. 'Brina didn't like me going into harm's way, but it was what I did best.

"Copy. Going in."

In the silent Black, I cycled the transport's maintenance hatch and dropped into the belly of the beast.

Point of no return
Buddha, in your great wisdom
Show their souls mercy