She appeared in a tunnel, once bare rock, now lined with metal to reinforce the asteroid’s structure. She floated along, her active camouflage making her invisible. Glauketas was tiny compared to Meditreme, but it could house fifty people comfortably, so it would feel like a mansion once she’d cleaned out all the rats. She crept into a chamber, full of looted comforts, and found one pirate sleeping in a hammock. She woke him up and put a sidearm in his face. “Hi. You’ve been boarded. Why didn’t you go on the field trip? Let me guess, too smart and valuable to risk on such a mission, right?”

He was unshaven and red-eyed and staring at the gun like it was the source of all knowledge in the universe. The rest of Callie was invisible, so it made sense that he’d focus on the weapon. “My hangover was too bad. I couldn’t stop throwing up. Please don’t kill me.”

“Give me an accurate accounting of personnel currently on this rock, and I’ll put you in a pod and send you on your way. Lie to me and I’ll put you out an airlock.”

“You’ll do that anyway.”

“No, I won’t. I used to be the cops, and I haven’t gone all the way feral yet.”

He shrugged. Pirates, in her experience, were brave in numbers and less brave when cornered alone. “There are only four of us. The others are probably all in the control room. There was an all-hands alarm a few minutes ago, but I didn’t answer it, because I’m sick.”

“How were you lot ever the scourge of the spaceways? I guess the ones left behind are the dregs, though, aren’t you?”

She’d impugned his pride, and he glared. “When the queen comes back, you’re dead. She’ll kill you slow. She likes that. She might let us all help.”

“I wouldn’t count on your people coming back. Not all of them, anyway. Where’s the control room?” He told her, and she hogtied him with zip ties and gagged him with a dirty shirt before leaving him in his hammock.

She crept up on three pirates, all looking a bit more capable than the one she’d disabled, clustered together in a round room full of screens and control panels. They were arguing and pointing at the screen, trying to figure out why the White Raven refused to explode when they shot things at it.

Callie considered killing them, and she considered wading in throwing elbows and head-butts, but hand-to-hand combat in an environment suit was awkward, so instead she lifted her non-lethal gauntlet, shocked one, and darted the others.