Chapter Three
“Our ancestors called them Simian Hereticus. Hairless, upright, tool-bearing, star-crossing, scum-sucking little apes. On our homeworld, Maur kept hairless apes as pets. Simis, we called them affectionately. When we first found these ‘Terrans,’ my ancestors expected to make fast friends with this adorable race of sentient Simis. They turned, slaughtered many of my people, and wiped out a peaceful exploration mission. After that disastrous first contact, we branded them Simian Hereticus. We hated them. We fought them. We… lost. Impossible. Ours is an honorable, prideful people. Humans wounded that pride. Some pretend to have forgotten that wound. Others know the truth. Our war with the Simian Hereticus is not over. It is merely delayed. One day we will rid the galaxy of Simian Hereticus.”
–Mission report from Jingda Asamba Nos Obaguar, commander of Operation [CLASSIFIED], Translated to Galactic Standard by the VE, Fitzgerald.3.
Three different angles showed the crew of the Shrike dispersing from the ship’s cockpit and going about their business. All except the pilot and her captain at least, who lingered for a time and began speaking to one another about matters the man eavesdropping had no interest in.
“Mute,” Nolan Montgomery commanded.
“Of course, sir,” said Fitzgerald.3, his VE, before muting the holographic display.. Virtual Encephalons, or so-called Dumb AI, were the heavily regulated and easily-controlled solution to the AI problem. Fitzgerald.3 may have been toeing the Dorian’s line of sentience, but Nolan was still rich enough to get away with such things by bribing the right officials. For now.
Nolan leaned away from his desk, considering. His spider drones would remain aboard the Shrike, monitoring the crew and compiling predictive algorithms for each of their personalities. Every variable would need to be considered. Every string needed to be just so in order for him to pluck it at the right time.
A figure melted out of the shadows in his office. A Hissak wearing reactive camouflage to render herself virtually invisible. She was considered quite beautiful for her species. Freshly molted, her black scales seemed to shine. Her forked tongue tasted the air as she sidled past Nolan’s desk and flicked a display across the viewport.
Six dossiers appeared where she pointed her MODAC.
“Four experienced frontline fighters with impressive records, more than five hundred confirmed kills between them. Those are the ones that show up in military or arena records, who knows what they’re up to nowadays. A crackshot keyboard jockey who claims to have cracked the security of the Tempolose Nethera’s Cyber-Vault. Twice. Could be lying, but I’m inclined to believe him.”
“Is he going to be an issue to our operational security?” Nolan inquired.
“No. I assure you I have taken the proper precautions,” Fitzgerald.3 promised.
Nolan nodded, satisfied.
“And a psion that doubles as the ship’s pilot,” Mina concluded. “Most of her record is patchy at best, but every piece of data I can dig up on her are all records of violent psionic outbursts that have resulted in numerous brutal deaths. That was when she was still in her teens. She seems to have mastered herself since then. Personal assessment, I think she channeled some of her rage into flying. Case and point,” she clicked her MODAC and the dossiers were replaced by a series of needle-threading starship maneuvers, each captured by a variety of sensors across a dozen systems. “All in all it’s not a bad line-up. They’ve gotten each other through some tough scrapes out on the edge. By all accounts they’re good enough to contend with some of the best crews to ever run the Nethra. Out here, they’re nearest competitors are the Donahue Twins.”
Nolan wrinkled his nose at the mere mention of the witless wonders.
“Even better, they’ve only lost one crew member for the entire seven year span they’ve been flying together.”
Nolan whistled low. “Downright miraculous, in their line of work.”
“Agreed. As for your concerns, I’d say the Orc’s the smartest of the bunch. Hardly a glowing recommendation, but it’s a fact. Captain’s smart enough to come out here and earn a pretty penny from the so-called Forgotten Houses–”
“Not for long, we’re not,” Nolan interjected, arguing with no one in particular.
“Indeed. The Captain’s got some wisdom under his belt and a fair bit of cunning beneath that ridiculous hat he wears. Nothing we can’t handle. Risk assessment, I’d take him out first if things go sideways. The others will fall apart and turn on each other without him. But I don’t imagine that will be necessary. Individually, none of them appear bright enough to guess our true intentions on their own until it is too late. I told you using some anti-Maur bait would be the right bone to throw them off the scent. They’ll be too busy bickering amongst themselves to put the pieces together. By the time they realize what’s really going on, it’ll be too late for them to,” she adopted a slight frontier Terran twang, “‘hightail it out of the system and never look back.’”
“Spot on impression,” Nolan said glibly.
“Why thank you. Now, as your chief of security, it is my job to warn you about the risks inherent in your special request. It is my opinion that the dangers far outweigh any potential–”
“I’m going, Mina. End of discussion. I need to see this with my own eyes.”
She reached up and massaged the ridge between her eyes, a gesture roughly equivalent to a Terran pinching the bridge of their nose in frustration. “Right, yeah, obviously. Why wouldn’t you accompany the armed criminals you’re planning to betray into a dangerous, unexplored, viciously hostile spacecraft of unknown but presumably extra-galactic origin? I can’t see anything wrong with that idea. It’s a stroke of pure brilliance, Nolan.”
“So glad you think so. You’ll be coming with me.”
“No shit? Of course I’m going with you. How else was I going to ensure your safety? Sure as void wasn’t going to entrust that responsibility to these bumbling buffoons,” she gestured angrily up at the holographic drone footage of the Shrike’s crew. The gesture caused her eyes to track to the display and she blinked, caught off guard.
“Ah. It appears the captain and his pilot are engaged in coitus. Damn. My last Pornucopia search was tame by comparison. I… I didn’t know Citza could use their tails like that.”
Nolan glanced back up and winced as he was treated to three different angles of some particularly rough sex. One of the angles gave him a view of Duncan he never wanted to see.
“Huh,” Mina said to herself. “He is surprisingly well hung for a Terran. You go girl. Couldn’t be me. I like my guts right where they are.” She fell silent for a second or two, just watching. “You know, Nolan, when this whole thing goes south—which it will—and assuming we make it out alive, we could probably just sell this footage and make back everything you just paid them… and then some. Damn. I can’t tell if he loves her or hates her. Maybe both?”
“Off.” At his command, Fitzgerald.3 deactivated the displays. Too late to block out the image from scarring Nolan’s brain, but hopefully soon enough to prevent further psychic damage. “Stay focused, Mina. We’ve got a mission to complete.”
Mina sighed. “It wouldn’t kill you to live a little, y’know.”
He shrugged. “And perhaps I will. After the mission is finished. Not before.”
“There are more important things than the mission, Nolan.”
“Not to me. Not yet. My vision is paramount. When it is done, when Houston is livable and green again, when my family name is secured, then I will concern myself with such trivial matters as ‘living a little.’ Until then there is only this. I have made my peace with it.”
The Hissak shook her head in disappointment. “I’ll go make the arrangements then,” she said sadly, walking towards the office door.
Nolan’s eyes tracked to the sway of her hips, lingering on the curve of her ass. A lifetime of staying fit and ready for battle had given her a highly toned figure, which was precisely Nolan’s type. She paused, glancing back his way and catching him red handed. Some old instinct in him told him to blush and look away. He ignored it and kept his gaze level, calm, and steady.
Mina smiled. “Good to see you’re still alive in there. Even it is deep, deep down in some forgotten crevice. You know, I’ve got a tail too. If you wanted, we could try–”
Nolan blushed. “You are dismissed, Mina.”
She sauntered out of his office with a smirk.
Nolan shook his head and stared out the viewport at the wheeling starscape beyond. The stars themselves were peaceful. All their heat and fury, viewed from lightyears away, shone too brightly against that great black oblivion to be ignored.
Inevitably his gaze was drawn down to the dead, irradiated wasteland of Houston rotating far below. There was nothing he could do for her. Not yet. But if things went his way, his world would once again be green and vibrant.
Slowly, more out of curiosity than anything else, he ordered Fitzgerald.3 to reactivate the spy drones and set his office’s security sensors to private mode.
-
“It’s handled,” Squint announced to the bridge.
The rest of the crew looked over from where they’d been twiddling their thumbs waiting for him to be done.
“What are they seeing?” Felix asked.
“Cap and Sybil getting it on.”
Sybil groaned. “Again?”
“Public displays of affection make people uncomfortable,” Squint summarized with a dismissive wave.
“Blackest Void, you’re such a perv, Squint. How exactly did you manage that? You got our full-body scans lurking in that junk drawer you call a cranium?”
“Yes, actually. The Auto-Doc takes full body scans each time it patches one of you up, and I can pull ‘em up whenever. Blue’s got a bad left knee but refuses to get a prosthetic. Cap’s liver ain’t what it used to be. Gunner’s gonna need a reprint on his left lung here in a month or two. What? Don’t look at me like that,” he said defensively as the crew all glared at him, “I only keep eyes on the people I care about.”
“As if you care about anyone but yourself,” Felix said snidely.
Squint set a hand against his chest, offended. “Does that really come as such a shock to you, kitty? You look at me and see only this crude shell. Judge me not for my metallic carapace, before you sits a man with a heart of gold.”
“Don’t you mean an oil-pump made of gold?” Sybil asked sardonically.
Squint scoffed. “Someone’s feeling feisty today. Relax, princess. It’s a composite video. Not your real bodies, just a convincing facsimile. I tasked an old VE program I had lying around to compile a bunch of old clips and make it look convincing. Ish. Might have taken some liberties.”
“Define ‘liberties,’” Duncan ordered.
Squint flashed his unnaturally white teeth. “Not telling, boss.”
“Question. Why did it have to be Cap and Sybil?” Felix asked. “You could have run a composite of Gunner and I, for instance.”
Gunner very subtly shifted a step away from the tiger-striped Maur.
Squint shrugged. “I considered it, but the profile I’ve spun up for Mister Montgomery suggests he’s anywhere from sixty to eighty-five percent likely to exhibit homophobic prejudices. He’d be more suspicious of two men getting it on, and he’d be more likely to go digging to see if it was fake. I can fend him and his pet VE off, of course, but I prefer not to waste my time with such things. I’ve got bigger concerns. Namely, phishing in the station’s local datastreams for information about our target.”
“Caught anything worthwhile?” Blue wondered, carrying on Squint’s analogy.
“Couple of things, actually. Personnel files were of particular interest. Nolan used to have a much larger detail attached to this station. Nothing like the skeleton crew running things now. Wondered where they went until I checked out the so-called evidence he provided. The record shows a frigate arriving in-system, no problem. On the return flight things get a little screwy, but I’ve pieced together what I think happened. The frigate goes up to the jump gate and passes all the Dorian’s handshake protocols just fine, and something transits through the gate. But based on the size of the gate distortion, whatever made the return trip was significantly lighter than the frigate was supposed to be. They might have had an escape craft lined up for the exit, be it a shuttle or some stealth craft, who knows. My guess is that the frigate itself used chem-thrusters to jolt off-course and then went full silent running mode, drifted right past the gate while the escape craft jetted on through.”
“And the Dorians didn’t notice?” Gunner asked incredulously.
“Didn’t notice, didn’t care, or were paid well enough to pretend. Who knows? I’m a hacker, not a clairvoyant. This is what the data says. Dorians keep their own records, so if you want me to spin up personality indices for whichever satyrs were on duty thirty years ago, you’re going to need to get me access to their network. Which would be a job and a half.”
Gunner held up his hands. “No thanks. Rule one of running, steer clear of satyrs. Learned that one the hard way.”
“You were saying. About the missing personnel,” Duncan prompted.
Squint nodded. “Right. I created a cone of potential locations the frigate could have made it to using only chem thrusters. Most paths lead past the edge of the system and out into deep space at Minus Four. Even powered down, that’s a pretty good pace. Stack on thirty years of dead momentum, they’d be pretty damn distant by now. There’s no records of ships flying out that far from Sola Stella. Which led me to examine the much slimmer possibility. It’s a narrow window, but if they were precise enough, the frigate could have entered a stable orbit through this system’s outer asteroid belt. What we Terrans called a Kuiper belt back home. Sola’s is particularly dense, so it makes for hazardous flying. Nothing Sybbie can’t handle.”
“You know I hate it when you call me that.”
“Would you prefer to be called princess?”
“Not by you.”
“Then Sybbie it is. As I was saying, traffic data we gathered on our way in-system suggests that there has been a lot of travel between this station and one particular asteroid along the outer belt. My theory is that the Maur craft took this narrow path and slipped into a wore orbit to observe the coming battle. They relayed data about the fall of Houston back to the Federation, and their mission was done. Either they found some way to slip out of the system later on or it was a suicide mission, but either way the frigate is still floating out there. At some point in the past thirty years, probably fairly recently, Nolan Montgomery’s team discovered this frigate and sent out personnel to scour it. And based on how sparsely populated this station is, and how much effort the quaint little VE is putting into concealing that fact, I believe the bulk of his staff is actually now on board or nearby this frigate. There. That’s all I’ve got. At least, everything that’s relevant to the mission. I could also drain the accounts of every MODAC attached to the station’s network if any of you were up for some old-school cyber piracy. For old times’ sake.”
“The VE’s covering it up?” Blue asked, ignoring Squint’s offer.
Squint sighed, disappointed. “Oh yeah. He’s got programs running to make it seem like the whole station’s buzzing with activity. But once I got past his firewalls, active sensors indicate nothing but a skeleton crew in place.”
Duncan shifted uncomfortably. “If he’s got all this staff posted out by the frigate, why hire outside contractors in the first place?”
Gunner let out a grunt. “I’ve got a few guesses. None of them are good.”
Felix shook his head. “We can speculate all we like. Won’t change what we’re up against. Whatever’s waiting for us, we cut through it and make it to the payday. This is just another day for us, guys. Another desolate system. Another evil bastard in charge who’s winding up for the sucker punch. Another bullshit conspiracy. We can do this in our sleep.”
Duncan nodded his thanks to Felix. “Agreed. There’s variables we can’t account for, but that’s fine. We’ll muddle through. Let’s focus on what we can control. Squint, can you get us a blueprint for that Maur frigate?”
“Way ahead of you. Already got a simulation spun up so we can all map our way through it at our own pace. Want me to populate it with enemies?”
“Damn right. Little bit of everything. The more we’re used to facing off against a variety of targets, the better we’ll do. Task one of your VEs to crank up the difficulty. The boy’s and I will tackle it individually and then as a group. Shoot Sybil the coordinates.”
“Got ‘em already,” Sybil grumbled. “Three days at sublight.”
“Plenty of time to get acquainted with the layout. Let’s get to it. By the time we land on that frigate, I want us all to know that ship prow to stern. Got it? Good. Let’s do this.”
