The last Marines are captured.

I tagged along behind Captain Domino and the Helcion redshirts as they pushed deeper into the interior of the defence platform. The corridors and siderooms we passed were quickly checked by Latoyah and Whipp working in tandem to cover one another, but all were deserted. I had been on enough of these platforms during my service and they were built to a standard design so it was obvious we were working our way towards the command hub. Most of the siderooms would only be in use if extra Marines had been stationed for a mission, when the platform was simply monitoring a star system only a skeleton crew was needed. We reached the command hub in the centre of the station and the outer rooms such as the infirmary and armoury were confirmed to be clear before we moved to the platform control room. There was another set of armoured blast doors sealing off control similar to the outer doors I had breached upon entry to the platform.

"Hustle that cute butt," Domino called back to me as the **** party came to a halt. "And make it snappier than the last door for fucks sake. I wanna get to the fun part of this hunt."

I edged past the Helcions and approached the door controls to hack them. Through the reinforced plexiglass panels of the door, I could see a couple of Marines inside, one frantically talking into the comms unit while another covered the door with an **** carbine. The Marine on the comms was a woman with the insignia of a junior lieutenant, she glanced back at the door when the male sergeant alerted her of my presence. She looked young, probably newly commissioned from the academy to be posted to this backwater mining system where in theory there was little chance of action. Her platinum blonde hair was longer than regulation, but braided and coiled to shorten it off her collar. The Sergeant was a few years older, also blonde, but a darker shade and his hair was a buzzcut. I opened up the control panel, connected the diagnostic pad from the toolkit and started to hack into the door control. The Lieutenant realised what I was attempting and tried to counter.

"She's trying to shut me out," I reported to Domino. I could have let the Marine succeed and fuse the door shut, but it would only delay the Helcions a little while and if they breached the door with explosives then there was a good chance the Marines could be injured or killed in the explosion. "Don't worry, I got this. She knows her stuff, but she's no engineer."

I knew these systems much better than Marine and it was easy enough for me to lock the officer out of the controls and override the door lock. When she realised I had booted her out of the control system she turned and snatched up an auto pistol and crouched into a firing posture. The door hissed open and both Marines opened fire as I dropped to the floor and got what cover I could from the door frame. The light of the Helcion shield flared with blue sparks as a few rounds were deflected and then I heard the report of Whipp and Latoyah's launchers. A pair of metallic spheres sailed through the door and rebounded off the far wall of the control room to ricochet crazily around the confined space. The Marines, believing they were about to explode took harder cover. Unlike earlier there was no corner to hide my view of the capture drones in action as with a loud pop they detected targets and activated.

The segmented spheres suddenly uncoiled, rising up to a little over head height like a snake about to strike. The Lieutenant was fast, her pistol got of a burst of rounds that pinged harmlessly off the metallic body of the drone as it homed in on her. A flexible metal tentacle suddenly shot out from the capture drone's body, tipped with an open magcuff. The Lieutenant let out a surprised yell as the magcuff snapped shut around the wrist holding the pistol. She screamed louder still as the tentacle retracted back into the drone with the same speed as it had shot forth. The Marine officer was spun around as she was dragged back towards the drone and a second metal appendage burst out and her other wrist was magcuffed. Both tentacles shrank back inside the body of the drone, dragging the Lieutenant backwards as her arms were drawn behind her back and the two magcuffs locked together. For a couple of seconds, she kicked wildly backwards with her booted feet before more appendages emerged and her ankles were each seized by magcuffs.

Still struggling frantically and cursing loudly the Marine officer was pulled back against the rearing body of the drone. Her Sergeant's deeper, masculine cries and string of expletives mingled with hers as he was disarmed and restrained in the same manner as his superior. I cautiously rose from the deck as Domino sauntered past with a pleased and amused smile on her lips. She stepped close to the pair of struggling Marines and examined them leisurely and I stepped up close behind her.

"Good work Sweetcheeks." Domino commended me and grabbed my chin to give me a kiss on the lips that lacked its usual aggressive dominance. "I can see you will be very useful. We might well have lost some of the merchandise if we had to crack those doors with explosives."

"You'll rot in a fucking detention centre for this, you pirate cunt." The Lieutenant swore, her pale blue eyes blazing with anger. "You will never make it planetside, load up and get out of this system before the UCS navy arrives you dumb pirate bitch."

"That would be slaver bitch in actual fact." Domino corrected her. "And I have what I came for already, you and your little soldiers. I could not give a quick flick of the bean about whatever rocks the miners have been digging up on that planet. The Bitch is a **** ship not a fucking garbage scow."

"Slaver? You're Helcions?" The Lieutenant now looked afraid and her defiant anger evaporated. "You degenerate scum don't raid this deep inside Colony space."

"That a fact?" Domino asked with a snort of laughter. "Coming from a **** I just caught I would say that is a fucking dumb statement. Not that it matters, intelligence ain't a quality your buyers will be wanting. A fit body, wet cunt, tight butthole and the fact that you are a former Marine is what they'll happily pay for."