by Andrew Beery
The current weapons officer, a swarthy man named Brantly McGinnis who went by the name Mick-G, spit on the floor near his station. The spittle, which was largely masticated tobacco, joined a brown mess that had been building up on the floor in the year and a half since the captain had last forced the crew to clean the bridge.
“Ya want me to splane things to her?” Mick-G said with an eager glint in his eye.
“If I k’trust ya not to destroy her I might be tempted but that ship isn’t big enough ta carry any cargo. Her treasure be in her ‘puters. Best try not to knock her up too badly.”
Harry relaxed slightly. He looked at the captain who nodded. Harry reached forward and toggled the controls that caused the gravity mines to pull the small craft nearer to the marauder.
“Mick-G, you have the bridge,” the captain said. “Don’t be blowing anything up or fuxing with buttons you shouldn’t be! Ya get me mister?”
“Aye sir… no unnecessary fux’n”
“Mr. Bedmore, Mr. Duggal… be so kind as to join me at the forward docking port. Feel free to draw yer weapons but I’ll bugger you good if you damage anything in that ship until we’ve cleaned her out.”
“Aye Captain,” the two men said in unison.
***
The forward docking port was the only one of three on the ship that still worked. The rear port was sealed with plasta-steel after a mishap involving a drunk former crewmember and a cutting torch who had thought he was opening a stubborn bathroom lock. The mid-deck port was a victim of poor maintenance and had not worked for the better part of a decade. The forward docking port was in need of paint and a good scrubbing but the electro-mechanical assembly was generally in good shape. The seals had been replaced less than a year ago in one of the few attempts the crew had made to engage in preventative maintenance.
A short beeping sound and a change in the docking status light indicated that the flexible docking clamp had extended and auto-locked on the smaller crafts universal docking connector.
“The board shows a hard seal,” Harry said as the captain looked at him.
“Crack’er open then, Mister Bedmore.”
Harry reached forward and toggled a comm button on the docking port’s control panel. “Hey you in there… we are about to open the door. We would appreciate it if you would refrain from doing anything that we will all regret. Be a good girl and just wait there for us. You don’t hurt us… we won’t hurt you.”
The circular door rolled on solid gearing out of the way and into the recess in the wall. A short two feet away was the cold metal exterior of the courier’s access hatch. GCP standards required a manual override on all such exterior hatches. This was a safety measure that prevented astronauts from being trapped outside of their ships.
Randy reached forward and pulled the manual latch down on the small ship’s hatch. There was a brief hiss as the pressure differential equalized. The courier access hatch recessed slightly and then slid sideways into the cavity in the hull designed to accommodate it.
A young brunette woman in a standard black BCI uniform sat in the courier’s only chair. Two silver pips on her collar indicated she was a First Lieutenant. Her look was a mixture of anger and defiance.
“Computer, lock all systems. Situation Baker. Biometric override only. Purge on any attempt to bypass security. Confirm instructions.”
A cold mechanical voice echoed back her orders.
The young BCI officer glared at the pirates standing just outside the courier’s access port. “The computer on this ship is not an AI. You cannot reason with it. You cannot bargain with it. ‘Situation Baker’ means the system will take whatever measures its cold logic deems necessary to protect its cargo.”
“Your ship is too small to be carrying much cargo,” Randy quipped while inspecting her head to toe. “Perhaps there is something else of value we could find onboard.”
“Git out a the way, ya fool… as I said before… her cargo be in her ‘puter data core!”
Randy stepped back as his captain pulled on his shoulder. As the older man stepped forward into the space vacated by his sensor officer he doffed his grubby aviator’s cap.
“Captain Randel Hoffman-Cunningham III at your service ma’am,” he said with a wicked grin that managed to convey a sense of depravity that words never could. “I’m sure that once we get to know each other better – and we will get to know each other better… you will be most happy to accommodate us.”
Chapter 4: Changes…
Captain Randel Hoffman-Cunningham III sat back gingerly in his command chair. He was holding an ice pack to his face. He was not a happy man. The interrogation of their young female captive had not gone well. She was sitting safely in the Recluse’s holding cell but that was about all that had gone according to plan. He was sporting a severely bruised set of genitalia as well as a broken nose. The first was the result of getting too familiar with the female captive. The second was courtesy of an errant punch by Randy Duggal who hit him while swinging at Harry Bedmore.
The young head-strong brat had decided to have a go at the young woman after she had floored his captain with a knee to the groin. When she continued to prove a little too spunky for his liking, he lashed out at the woman with three brutal slaps. He was intent on continuing to teach her respect when Harry jumped in and slugged the kid. A fight ensued between the two men that resulted in both the captain (as a bystander) and Randy (as a direct participant) getting their faces smashed into the hull plating.
Randel shook his head. Say what you will about their newest crew member but Harry Bedmore could fight. Over the course of the entire sparring match the younger man did not manage to land a single punch. Harry dodged every attempt and usually landed a few love taps of his own in response to the attempt.
Randel was about to throw them both in the brig when Harry sagely pointed out that BCI operatives routinely were implanted with counter-interrogation wetware that might trigger a remote thermite device that would completely destroy any chance of accessing the courier’s computer core should the wetware detect an interrogation-by-force attempt. The same would happen with chemical inducements and so the only other option would be to charm the young lady into helping them --or taking the courier to a facility with the technological means of extracting the valuable data cores without triggering the self-destruct protocols. That final option, of course, required profit sharing and entailed a risk should the cores prove to be worthless… even should this last be the case, the technicians would insist on being paid something regardless of the data recovered.
In the end, Randel had been forced to concede the point to Harry as well as the obvious choice of paramour. Neither he as the captain nor the young Mister Duggal were likely to make any progress with the young woman given their earlier attentions. That meant someone from engineering or Harry. Harry, having just defended the young lady, was the obvious choice.
***
Sam Eddington was cold. The cell he was in was damp, dark and dismal. He had been in it for far too long. He banged on the metal wall separating his cell from that of Rhino’s.
“You still awake in there, big guy?”
“Don’t know… why don’t you bang on the damn wall again… if I’m asleep maybe it will wake me up,” the gruff barkeep grumbled back in a voice that said banging on the wall again was not a good idea.
“Ah, you’re all bark and no bite… besides it’s not like beauty sleep is going to do that mug any good.”
“You’re a brave man when there is a sheet of duraplast plating between us,” Rhino quipped back.
“My mammie didn’t raise no fools,” Sam responded glibly.
“You were raised by your father!”
“True enough my big friend… true enough.”
The soft banter between the two continued for several more minutes. Rather than being idle chatter; it was part of a well-rehearsed plan. Sam had rolled over in his cot and was facing the shared wall between their two cells. He extracted
a cap off a surgically modified tooth. A small load of ultra-advanced human-developed nanites, modeled after their Heshe brethren, adhered to the undersurface of the cap. The tiny machines generated their own cloaking field that effectively hid them from the type of casual scans he and Rhino had been subjected to. Had the BCI been aware of the true nature of their adversary, such scans would have been the bare minimum they could have expected to endure. As it was, their cover as low-level insurgents ensured they would be taken captive but at the same time ensured they would not be subject to the full arsenal of interrogation options available to a government agency as powerful as the BCI.
He placed the false tooth against the metal wall, using his body as a shield. A tiny silver stream quickly disappeared into the wall.
“Well, as fun as this has been; I think it might be time to take a nap,” Sam said. This was the signal to put their plan into motion. In a few minutes Sam could hear the sound of soft snoring coming from the other cell. Slowly the volume increased until the sound threatened to rattle the very foundations of the building.
The sound of Rhino’s fake snores completely masked the subtle noises being made by the nanites Sam had released earlier. The video feeds from the surveillance systems that monitored every cell on this floor were in the process of being compromised. First a secondary signal was bled off and fed into special receptors embedded in his visual cortex. With these Sam could see to instruct the tiny machines to create a visual loop that effectively hid his and Rhino’s actions… at least until someone came to physically check on them.
Sam directed two groups of nanites to split off from the main group. One set he directed to attack the locking mechanism on his door. Because even the best human nanites were not as sophisticated as the Heshe counterparts he had to visually designate a target for the tiny machines. This was easy enough for his door but it meant Rhino would have to wait until he had a visual line of sight.
His enhanced hearing heard the soft ping of the door’s locking mechanism release as the retaining pin dissolved under the onslaught of millions of microscopic nanites. He pushed the door open the barest fraction of an inch. He couldn’t see or hear anyone in the corridor. Of course this meant very little since in all likelihood the hallway was monitored remotely. He directed the second stream of nanites towards the camera in the hallway that he had spotted while being brought in. They quickly usurped control of the device and began to feed a looped signal that mimicked what their brethren were doing with the video feed in his cell.
He touched the locking mechanism on his door and allowed the nanites there to flow back onto his hand. Stepping out into the corridor, he quickly moved towards Rhino’s door where the same general procedure was repeated. In a few moments the big man was standing next to him in the main hall of the Asimov City’s BCI detention block.
“Where to now?” Rhino asked in a soft voice that was at odds with his bulk.
“Our contact said the computer interlink is in the sub-basement. If we are going to tap into it we will need to make our way down there.”
The trip through the maze of corridors was complicated by the need to avoid contact with BCI personnel. At several points the way forward was blocked by doors they dared not compromise or officers moving through the building on their normal business. Finally, they reached the security gatehouse that permitted egress from the cell blocks and the rest of the facility.
Sam looked at Rhino and nodded silently. The big man accessed his internal commlink and instructed a bio-electronic wet-pack embedded under his skin to start generating a preconfigured cloaking field. Rhino’s form shimmered briefly and was replaced by that of an equally large BCI security guard complete with uniform. The cloak would only last a few minutes. Human technology still was not as capable as the Heshe tech the two men had seen demonstrated by the covert forces team leader, a retired admiral by the name of Melbourne, but still it got the job done.
Rhino grabbed both of Sam’s wrists in a single massive hand. Sam, for his part, held his wrists together as if he were in shackles. The bigger man reached forward with his other hand and punched in a series of random numbers to the doors keypad. He followed this up by placing his thumb on the biometric scanner. The device attempted to read his DNA. At the same time a small group of specially designed single purpose nanites flowed out from under his thumbnail and within a fraction of a second took control of the door mechanism. The code that had been entered by the big man was completely incorrect but the nanites quickly suppressed the alarm signal and instead actuated the open door mechanism.
The big man who still looked like a security guard entered the gatehouse pushing Sam in front of him.
Two men and a woman sat near a series of monitoring screens. The stations were intended to keep track of the various prisoners, but from the playing cards scattered on the countertop, as well as the fact that all three where still holding cards in their hands, it was obvious that the monitoring duties were not rigorously attended to.
“Where’s he going?” One of the men asked.
“He’s got a conjugal visit scheduled with your mom,” Rhino answered glibly.
The three started to react but Sam and Rhino reached them before they could move. Unfortunately for the security guards, the two covert operatives had a number of specially engineered bio-enhancements at their disposal. Embedded in each of their abdomens was an artificial organ designed to incapacitate adversaries. The artificial organ in question was a series of several thousand flattened electrocytes, stacked like pancakes and forming a massive bio-capacitive battery, not entirely dissimilar to the Hunter organs found in Earth’s Amazonian electric eels.
These bio-weapons discharged 600 volts at one amp for a few milliseconds. It was not enough to kill but it could easily render a victim unconscious. Special myelinated electrical pathways brought the discharge potential to their fingertips.
The three security guards never knew what hit them as a single touch from either of their former prisoners rendered them unconscious. Sam was thankful that there were only three of the guards in the room because their ability to stun was limited in that it took a few minutes for the wetpack electric cells to recharge.
Sam and Rhino quickly tied the former captors up using plastic slip-ties that were a standard part of every security guard’s kit. A series of torn sleeves later and each of the three was gagged as well.
Sam slipped on one of the uniforms taken from the guard that was closest to him in size. None of the three was even remotely as large as Rhino but his cloaking system was good for another few minutes.
Exiting the room and heading into the main part of the facility, Sam consulted his quantum-linked AI interface for the best route to the data center which was their ultimate target.
“This way big guy,” Sam motioned.
“Let’s look for some big lug on the way,” Rhino whispered. “I don’t know how much longer this cloak is going to hold.”
***
Cat sipped her coffee as she listened to her old friend talk. Sherry Melbourne’s news had not been good. The last three hundred years had not been kind to the Galactic Coalition. With the severe limits placed on hyperfield jump-points as well as the virtual shutdown of almost all Heshe technology the GCP had found itself struggling with challenges it had never expected to face.
Control of the small pool of known jump-points had become a thriving business in its own right. Corporations with their own private defense forces patrolled many of the busier routes. Many extracted a heavy toll from passing traffic traveling in both directions. Ostensibly, these tolls were to help fund counter-pirate operations but in truth it was becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish who was the pirate and who was the protector.
“So,” Cat said between sips. “I imagine the fleet has been busy keeping the peace.”
“That and picking up the pieces,” Sherry agreed. “The admiralty board was scattered across known space with no way at first of getting back together. Fortunatel
y our FTL communications network was fairly robust but even that has begun to fail over the years… especially with those colonies that are effectively cutoff.
“To make matters worse, the GCP is not the noble organization it once was. Most of the ideals that formed the basis of the coalition are still in place but special interests, especially within the mega-corporations that formed after you left; have eroded the confidence that those ideals will be honored.
“The GCP started responding to the threats that grew out of the Great Disruption, which is what the history folks starting called the changes that took place… by establishing bureaucracies to handle them. One of those bureaucracies was the Bureau of Commerce Investigation. Initially it was a taxing authority but over time it has become something much more powerful… something much more sinister.”
Cat watched her friend’s face as she spoke. There was a profound sadness there that did not find voice. She put her cup down and spoke softly. “What is it you are not telling me?”
Sherry sighed. “My answer depends on who I’m talking to. Am I talking to Fleet Admiral Kimbridge… or to my friend Cat?”
Cat stood and walked over towards the Yorktown’s observation window. Her mind raced. Much had changed in the universe and yet much had stayed the same. This woman was her friend and she wanted to trust her but hundreds of years had passed since they had last spoken. Time could change a person. What was it she wanted to say and yet was afraid to say?
“I don’t know how to answer you. I swore an oath to the GCP that I consider binding. In that respect I am Admiral Kimbridge. At the same time we are friends and I am woefully unprepared for the universe as it exists today. I need your honesty. What is it you want to say that makes you concerned about my rank?”
Sherry stood and walked to her position by the window. She looked out of it at the planet below. The city of Asimov was just coming over the horizon as the Yorktown hung in orbit above the night-side of the planet. A glowing ribbon outlined the edge of the city as it butted up against the shore of the planet’s single massive ocean.
