Free Gadget by Viola Grace

Chapter One
     
     
    Tobitha Morris closed her eyes and checked on her cargo. All cryo units were online and functioning at full capacity. Her ship had a belly full of escaped convicts and it was in her personal interest to make sure they stayed calm and unconscious in the belly of the ship.
    The wires and wireless connections that kept her in control of the Dark Fairy were integrated into her body, and it was times like this that she enjoyed the plugs and wires supplementing her neural systems. She was in the most secure part of her ship, she could sense a germ with the sniffles on any deck with the scanning units she had onboard.
    In her command deck, she had her favourite music playing. Despite six years in space and her exposure to dozens of other species, it was the sounds of home that relaxed her on long voyages, though she supposed music styles back on Earth had changed by now.
    The feeling of looking inside herself and outside at surrounding space had taken some getting used to, but now that she embraced her life as a Guardian Transport Specialist, it was just another new sensation that she had adapted to.
    “This is the Dark Fairy Guardian Transport with the escaped prisoners. Requesting aid with transfer.” Speaking through her thoughts and having it turn into an audio broadcast was one of the freakiest side effects of her newest implants.
    “We are ready and security has been increased to assist in your arrival. Do you want to dead drop or have us extract them?”
    Toby had no interest in landing her ship in the prison. “I will do a dead drop. They are all in stasis, but the moment they disconnect, the waking process will commence.”
    “We understand and are ready to decant your cargo.”
    Toby watched as the drop coordinates ran across her screen. She overlaid a projected grid on it and doubled checked against existing specs. She cut the audio feed. “Damn.”
    It looked like the prisoners were still running the facility. The drop zone was in an unsecured area and retrieving the drop box would allow some of the more slight species to hitchhike back onto the next vessel.
    “I have changed my mind. I am coming in. Be prepared to meet me at the dock.”
    She heard a spluttering on the other end of the com, and she grimaced as she loaded up her bio-weapons via the ship’s chargers. Toby didn’t like to use her built-ins—they made her skin feel too tight—but it was the best way to deal with the situation when her own body wasn’t up to the challenge.
    She called in the situation to Guardian control at the Nyal Imperium and began the slow descent to the prison world where the situation was unknown, and it wasn’t going to get better.
    She kept herself calm as she hooked into the prison systems and looked for the life signs of the guards. She found eight of them in one cluster near her landing site and forty of them in a distant area of the prison. If she freed the eight, they would be able to regain control of the rest of the facility.
    Eight was doable. She could rescue eight.
     
    She settled the Dark Fairy down gently and moved into position, attaching her ship to the lock plates. Toby detached from her ship and grabbed the pack of breathers. The eight were going to need them.
    Her dark suit was armoured and lined to keep her alive, but it was also quite stylish. As she made her way through her ship, she thanked the designer who had crafted it as part and parcel of her transformation.
    There was nothing like facing battle properly attired. It made a girl feel like she could take on the world, or at least a penal colony.
    Toby stood in front of her cargo hatch and switched her breathing over to minimal oxygen. It was show time.
    The door hissed open, and she stepped down the loading plank and toward the approaching men in ill-fitting uniforms. “Good afternoon, gentlemen. The cryo tanks are off and to the left, I will leave you to bring them in one at a time.”
    Toby smiled brightly and the man who