by Taylor Smith
For the past few hours she’d worked in an attempt to break into the woman’s communications system. And, for the past few hours, she’d become more and more agitated. Everything she tried was failing; even her more advanced hacking tools seemed useless.
She’d quickly deduced that the woman’s equipment enforced a multiple-factor authentication system. The first two weren’t a guessing game: a voice password, and biometric scan. At first she thought the third could require a retina scan but there wasn’t a camera here, or anywhere else in the store. She was forced to shut the system down and try to infiltrate it during its startup routines.
She didn’t dare put Jerry back in front of this machine, conscious or otherwise.
For hours she tried different methods. Nothing worked. It was agonizing because it was almost as if the system didn’t even see her attempts. And then she realized why: Jerry’s system was completely foreign to Haley’s equipment. It was like expecting a key-card to open a biometric lock. The technology just wasn’t compatible, even at the most basic levels.
Haley was becoming convinced that Jerry was an operative for a faction other than Clew or the Alliance. Who, though?
The Alliance held forty-three systems now, as they’d expanded by several in the past few years. More non-aligned systems were being won over, and shifted to aligned-status. The issue there was that each time a system opted for alignment into the Alliance, the Clew pirates would begin harassing them. It wasn’t until the world was fully integrated that the Fleet was able to protect them.
Clew didn’t have the technology, or the skill, to do what Jerry did. She was sure of it. That meant that there was another organization out there somewhere, possibly a non-aligned world which had developed tools that differed from any known technology at the most fundamental levels. So the question became: why did Clew have access to it? Had they made some pact with this mysterious faction? Perhaps she, and her superiors, had grossly underestimated Clew. It had happened in the past.
She powered the system off again and sat quietly for a moment. She would have to return to her ship soon, before the town began waking up. There was only one thing left to do: interrogate Jerry and determine if there’s an alternate method to accessing her equipment. Her ship had a limited interrogation system that she was trained for. After seeing what the woman was capable of, however, she knew it was a long shot.
Having made up her mind, she placed several surveillance devices around the shop. If anyone came snooping around, she wanted to know. Double-checking her work, she found again that her system registered every device properly, and she was able to access their feeds. There was no other major equipment in the shop besides Jerry’s terminal in back. That was disconcerting. Whatever the woman was using to jam her signals needed to be found, but she didn’t have time tonight.
***
Haley arrived back at her Strix before sunup. The run to town, and the return trip was refreshing. She rested on the steps that led up into her ship and gingerly rubbed her bruised left side. Her ribs were healing quickly, but they throbbed slightly at the workout.
As she relaxed, she watched the sun rise over the planet’s horizon, saw the wind blow tufts of dust about as the air changed in the sunlight, and wondered why anyone would settle here.
Haley boarded her ship and changed out of her combat suit. She’d decided to rest before beginning the interrogation, but needed to double check her ship’s systems first. When she shifted her system to display the video feed in the holding cell, her shoulders dropped. “What the hell?” she muttered to herself. The screen showed only the words: “Signal lost.”
This didn’t make sense to her. She’d searched the woman very carefully and knew all her gear, which wasn’t much, was locked in the ship’s equipment room. With several keystrokes, she scrolled through the internal security systems of her ship and found that the cell surveillance was the only video not registering.
She triggered the audio pickup and listened for a moment before activating her mic and saying, “Tara Mason.”
“There you are,” a voice said. “I was beginning to wonder if you’d ever care to talk.”
Haley’ eyes narrowed. How Jerry was interrupting her video feeds was a new mystery of the woman. It shouldn’t be possible, unless she had missed some piece of equipment during her search, but she was very thorough.
And then she realized the problem. Of course she missed something: her implant. Somehow the woman was disrupting systems around her through that thing in her head. The more she thought about it, the more she became convinced that Jerry was using her implant as the third and final authentication method against her equipment in the store. That was going to be a problem.
“Restore the video feed,” Haley said, knowing the system would disguise her voice in the holding cell.
“I’m not doing anything to your video feed,” came the calm response. “Perhaps your gear is faulty.”
Haley ran a diagnostic on the entire ship, not because she believed the woman about her equipment being bad, but because she was curious if the woman’s influences could affect any other systems. The cell was shielded, but she had to be sure.
After only a few moments, Haley was satisfied that Jerry could only affect equipment tied directly to the cell, such as the video. “Restore the video feed, Jerry,” she repeated, beginning to feel irritated.
“Jerry?” her prisoner asked, suddenly sounding very interested. “That’s unfortunate.” she said softly.
Haley cringed, immediately knowing she should have used the woman’s alias on this planet. She should end the conversation there, she knew, and continue when she was rested. But Jerry’s ability to affect her ship caused Haley great concern. “Yes, Jerry,” she decided to continue. “Restore the video feed.”
To her surprise, the image cleared to show Jerry lounging comfortably on the small bunk with her hands crossed on her stomach.
“Better,” Haley said and leaned back to take a look at the woman. She only had a few images of Jerry from long range, and now she knew why she could never get her equipment to work closer to the shop. The woman she met on Stormcall was tough-looking, with an outwardly excited personality. This woman, however, was very calm and had an air of superiority to her that Haley couldn’t put her thumb on. She also spoke with a different accent, which was more refined. The only thing Haley knew for sure was that this was the same woman she’d met on Stormcall, if not the same personality.
“Are you sure it’s better?” Jerry asked pointedly. “You know who I am, and now I know who you are. I’m unable to agree that that situation is better for either of us.”
Haley flinched at that. “Is that so?” she asked, and suddenly felt nervous. She brushed it aside, though, and knew it didn’t matter. The woman wouldn’t be going home any time soon, if ever. There would be no one to tell. In any case, she was bluffing, Haley was sure of it.
“Yes,” Jerry responded. “I’ve gone by hundreds of names over the past few decades, and I know exactly who those names are known to.” She seemed to sadden, and looked down at her hands for a moment before saying, “I really hoped I was wrong about you.”
Haley was impressed, but mental alarms began going off. If she had truly been so careless that Jerry could identify her, what else had she missed? “Go on,” she prodded.
“When you first arrived, and began tripping the security alerts on all my networks, I figured you for a low-level information dealer.” She smiled and looked up to the video pickup. “You were very sloppy by my standards, but not bad at all by Alliance standards… which are quiet low, you understand.”
Haley bristled. She’d spent the last two years in the most hellish of training she’d ever imagined. For someone to explain that she was lacking skill only served to infuriate her. She took a deep breath and grinned at the image of Jerry. She leaned into the mic and said, “You’re not going to anger me, Jerry. I’m not the one in a cell.”
Jerry sighed dramatically and said,
“I know. I should have grabbed my good mask. I’m guessing it was some sort of halogenated ether-theta derivative?” She shrugged and continued. “Tara Mason is a good name though. A proud name.” She looked back to the camera in her cell and asked, “Do you know why?”
Haley tapped her fingers on her console, not knowing where the conversation was going. She sighed and replied, “No. Why?” At least the woman was talking.
Jerry leaned back with a sad smile on her face. “She lived on Adara. Tara was incredibly happy with her life, but it ended tragically several years ago… a transportation accident. Her husband, Edward, didn’t take it very well. He let his life slip into drugs and was eventually living homeless, on the streets, in an eastern portion of the capital city.”
Haley froze. She had lived on the east streets of Adara’s capital city for nearly a year after her trial. But how would Jerry know that? Did she know that, or was this all simply smoke and mirrors to try and force more information out of Haley?
Jerry glanced back to the camera again. “One day, he was reported as the sole witness to a very interesting suicide.”
Haley leaned closer to the screen, her eyes widening as she listened.
Jerry shook her head sadly and said, “The news didn’t report his death, only hours after giving his statement. I locked that little bit of information away for myself. I found it very curious.” The woman sighed loudly and tilted her head. “The name ‘Jerry’ was only known by several crew members of the Reaper. I had my suspicions about your death, but you’ve confirmed them. You still have that stick-up-the-butt air about you, even when you’re trying to fight.”
Haley’s hand went to her mouth. She shook her head in disbelief. If Jerry knew that her death was faked, someone else was sure to know.
“You do know that you’re going to break Cade all over again, don’t you, Haley?”
She cut the audio-video feed and stood up. Her cover had been compromised, but to what extent? She paced back and forth several times before she decided she needed help from a more advanced interrogation team, or even the light interrogation system her Strix sported. In only a few minutes, the woman had been able to shake Haley to her core.
“This is not going how I expected,” she muttered to herself. She couldn’t contact Jonas, or the Lordell base. No communications were allowed, ever. She was obviously taking Jerry back to base, but not yet. All that was left was to tap the woman’s comms and wait for a Clew vessel to arrive. If she couldn’t get the location of Clew then, she would return to Lordell and hope that the interrogation team could extract the information from her prisoner.
She sat again and reactivated the comms to the holding cell. “Jerry, tell me how to access the communications array in your shop.”
Jerry stirred slightly and said, “That voice doesn’t do you any favors, dear. You sound like a neutered old man.”
Haley rolled her eyes and disengaged the voice synthetization. There was no hiding now, anyway. “Tell me how to access the comms in your shop.”
“That’s better. You know, you always reminded me of someone back home,” Jerry said with a smile.
Being redirected was one thing, but Jerry was changing the subject toward something that Haley was more interested about. If she could find out where Jerry obtained her training and equipment, perhaps all was not lost. “Oh, yeah?” she said casually.
The prisoner nodded, knowing she was being watched. “She always wanted things she couldn’t have, demanded them even. It was all quite silly,” she said with a small giggle.
Haley tapped a few commands into her console. Along the edges of Jerry’s bunk, several slender pylons rose. The top of each device blinked red. “Lay down, Jerry.”
Jerry’s laugh became louder. “Not a chance, dear.”
“Fine,” she replied, and entered a new sequence.
The audio from the holding cell cut out, as one hundred and thirty decibels of screeching noise was blasted into the small room.
Haley looked back to her screen and narrowed her eyes. Jerry was sitting there, resting, and seemed not even to notice. She terminated the noise and repeated, “Lay down.”
“Sensory torture,” Jerry said with a scowl and a shake of her head. “That’s extremely close to crossing a very dangerous line, Haley. I wish I could say that I expected more from you… Andrew and Dorian surely did. But it seems you’ve become nothing but a third-rate goon.”
Haley slammed the comms console and stood. Enough was enough. Her training had prepared her for this, but when she heard Cade’s name, her rage took over. She walked to the rear of the Strix and grabbed a rifle, then made her way to the holding cell. When she arrived, she unlocked it and slid the door open, aimed, and fired a wide-dispersal stun pattern.
Jerry was already mid-air, arms reaching out for her when the wave of energy slammed into her. Haley moved to the side as Jerry fell limp to the floor in front of her.
For a moment, she simply stood there and willed her heart rate to slow. She’d let the woman get the best of her, but she was running out of time and patience.
It took several minutes to move Jerry back to the bunk in the holding cell. Once there, she maneuvered the woman back into a flat position on her back. Haley re-secured the cell and returned to the cockpit of her ship.
She took several deep breaths to calm down. This had been a disaster, and Haley was a failure. She was sure that her report would place her first in line for decommission. At least that’s what Jonas called it.
Haley activated the ship’s interrogation system and watched the video feed as restraints launched from the pylons on the bunk to hold Jerry down. Once each strap was connected, the pylons turned from red to green. Then, a small device rose from the head of the bunk and maneuvered itself around Jerry’s head and face. Once it was in place, the device blinked yellow very slowly as the computer’s voice reported, “Calibrating interrogation halo. Enter desired power level.”
Jerry was a professional, but Haley knew what the device would do to her prisoner. She made the decision to not exceed level three, which was safe outside a dedicated interrogation team. Anything more and she risked damaging the woman’s brain.
The halo was used to stimulate portions of a person’s frontal and parietal lobes, forcing the subject’s decision and reasoning to align with the interrogator’s needs. The more power used, the more dangerous it became.
“Haley Marks,” sounded Jerry’s voice from the cell.
Haley activated the health-monitoring systems on the holding cell’s bunk, and found her prisoner had an elevated heart rate. The high-pitched, rhythmic beeps from the monitoring system came quickly.
“Nervous, Jerry?” Haley asked with a slight grin as she continued to work.
“You don’t want to do this, Haley,” came Jerry’s response. “Remember the line we spoke of earlier?”
Haley continued to work her console, entering the settings she needed into the halo’s system. “Don’t worry, Jerry. This won’t hurt,” she replied.
“Oh, this will hurt more people than you know. You really don’t want to dig around in here.”
She completed her console setup and watched as the system worked. After only a few seconds, it indicated its ready-state. She turned her attention back to the video screen, and zoomed the camera in for a close-up of her prisoner’s face. “Last chance, Jerry. Tell me how to access your communications system. Or you can just tell me how to find Clew, and save us all a headache.”
Jerry laughed at that, a wide smile beaming through the equipment over her head. “Yes, that would be preferential. May I ask you a question, before you begin?”
Haley sighed. “Why not?”
“Do you hate us, that much?”
She paused as she pondered the question. It was an easy answer, but she suddenly found herself wishing to be back aboard the Reaper with Cade and Andy. That was the most exciting time in her life. But it was also the most heart-breaking, after finally realizing they didn�
�t care if she lived or died on the streets of Adara. The thought of the hell that year had caused her, and what she’d gone through only resolved her answer. “More,” was her answer to Jerry’s question.
Jerry closed her eyes and said, “I forgive you, Haley. I hope Cade can, too.”
At that, she scowled, and activated the halo system.
Jerry’s head suddenly jerked to the left, and both her eyes filled with crimson. Alarms blared and the solid tone of a heart’s flat-line rang throughout the small cockpit.
“No,” Haley whispered and worked her console. She deactivated the halo system and double checked her settings. Everything was right. She glanced to the health monitor, which was registering traumatic brain injury, and shook her head. “No…” she repeated.
Haley felt herself slump back in her seat. She stared at the video feed in unbelieving shock. Jerry was dead.
She finally snapped out of her daze and quickly sat straight. She shut down the halo system and commanded a full diagnostic on its equipment and software. Her settings were accurate, she was certain. A level three interrogation was a light level, meant as a starting level for strong adults. Levels one and two were only used for children and weaker prisoners since it was certain to do absolutely no damage.
After only a few minutes, her ship reported back to her that the system had passed its checkouts, and there were no faulty or malfunctioning areas of the halo environment. She grabbed a data pad from its bay and studied the detailed diagnostic results. Her brow knit in confusion, and then it dawned on her.
“The line,” she whispered to herself, remembering what Jerry had said. She stood and smashed the pad against the bulkhead and shouted, “You knew!” She held her hands on top of her head and paced the small room trying to wrap her mind around Jerry’s death. “You knew…” she said again.
