Meanwhile, nearby in deep space...

“Hey Babe, are you seeing this?”

Claudia looked up from the old drill ships controls, over at her helmswoman’s display and immediately saw what had caught her attention; three ships coupled together and drifting openly in deep space. Tasha; her closest friend, lover and ships helmswoman looked up at her with a mischievous grin.

“There’s a prize catch if I ever saw one! Hell, not one of them is even broadcasting a distress beacon.”

Claudia wasn’t so sure, it had been ten months since they had made their daring escape from the female penal colony on the mining planet Drestia II and her years there had made her cautious of situations that seemed too good to be true. Just then the comms from the engine room beeped at her then Brit’s refined tones filled to cluttered cockpit.

“Say, are you ladies seeing this? Three courier class trading vessels dead in the water! Should Suki and I be preparing to punch their cards for them?”

That was the other two members of Claudia’s escapee-turned-pirate crew; Brit the jury-rigging engineer and Suki their all-round badass handywoman.

Claudia knew she had been lucky to find them down in that hell-hole of a refinery, between the four them they had found all the skills they needed to make their daring and ultimately successful escape.

Claudia, a tall lean red-head, had been co-pilot on a smuggling craft before getting caught by the Tuscon Corporation and sent away to their ‘corrections facility’ on Drestia II. Three years of sweating in a smelting bay had given her three things; skin bronzed from the constant unbearable heat, a hatred for anything with a dick wearing a guards uniform and finally; it had given her Tasha.

Tasha was a small pretty Latina sporting short cropped black hair with long bangs and a soft curvaceous body. She had been in the Tuscon Corporations facility for two years before Claudia had arrived there. The lithe little woman had shown her the ropes, helped her survive and become her closest friend and lover in their time together. Tasha had been a corporate spy before being uncovered, captured and sent to, as she called it; ‘Corporate butt-fucking Purgatory’. She had also been the one who hacked into the refineries security grid; and just as importantly she had introduced Claudia to her fellow escapees Brit and Suki.

Brit was named for her strong English accent, Claudia didn’t actually know her real name and she had never asked. She wasn’t sure where Brit had learned her improvisational engineering skill but she had sure been glad for it when the launch bay clamps had failed to lock down the old mining ship during their escape. In fact she had been glad to have the busty brunette wrench-monkey along countless other times since. After all, it had been Brit and Suki that had turned their stolen asteroid driller into something with some fighting spirit. At least they had, when they hadn’t been closeted away in their shared quarters with only a light bulkhead to muffle the moans and cries of pleasure they found in each other.

Suki was a small slender Asian girl who kept her long hair up in two schoolgirl pony-tails, something she would have never have done back in the colony around the brutal male guards. Her work with electronics, her ability to slide through impossibly small spaces and her surprising vicious fighting style had been the final element in their escape. They all owed her a lot, when things had looked ready to fall apart in the last moments of the escape; she had killed two guards bare-handed and sabotaged the shield that had been the final obstacle between them and freedom.

She had also been responsible for turning the drill ships four mining drones into a pretty effective set of **** probes and she had tinkering with the laser drilling bore until it would target ships hulls as readily as any asteroid.

All in all, the old drill ship they had renamed ‘The Valkyrie’ made one hell of a space pirate vessel. Its thick scarred hull was designed to survive small asteroid impacts and could take almost anything a commercial vessel could throw at it. It was far from being the fastest ship in deep space but it was very maneuverable and Claudia knew how to dodge and weave with the best. With the laser bore as a front cannon and the modified mining drones as deployable attackers it was one hell of an offensive craft if it got the drop on an unwary trader. With this old ship and her new resourceful crew… but wait…

Claudia thought over all they had gone through together and now, stumbling across a three expensive courier spacecraft floating dead in space, just when they needed it most? Something about this felt wrong to her. Tasha reached over, squeezed her thigh and gave her an encouraging smile.

“Not a weapon in sight and I don’t think they even know we’re here. We can be on them long before they can uncouple their ships and get away, come on Claudia, we need this.”

It was true, ‘The Valkyrie’ needed parts and they needed supplies. Any cargo on board would be a bonus that could go towards all of their future retirement plans. Claudia set course towards the ships putting on all the speed the old Driller had in it. How could these idiots not see them coming? Surely they had to be standing out on their scanners like a drop of red ink on a blank piece of paper.

“Just what the hell are they doing in there?” Claudia asked herself.