by Greg Remy
“Ha-ha!” shouted Kappa and grasped both of their bodies, pulling them in and giving them a giant hug. He squeezed them and nearly lifted them from the floor. Releasing his grip, he bent down slightly to be at eye level with Zoe. “So, Miss Zoe, adventure you say?”
Zoe looked at him, still somewhat tense, but her mind had soon rationalized enough of the new, unexpected state of things and she began to ease.
“Yes, Mr. Kappa, care to join us?”
Kappa simply beamed. Soon a smile born of relief began from Zoe and she could see the slightest evidence of one from Darious. She knew he was thinking the same thing as her. Their brush with the contract killer of the stars, the mercenary of death, was over.
Chapter 36
A Somewhat Good Man Goes to War
There was a momentary crackling of the phone communicator before the other end picked up.
“This is Mr. Achan’s office. Mr. Achan is not in right now.”
“This is Kappa.”
All traces of enthusiasm dissolved from the secretary. “One moment please.”
Kappa patiently held the phone and breathed with slow rhythmic breaths. The call crackled once more.
“Kappa,” said a gruff, seething voice. “Status?”
“I’m in the MICA-10 Sector.”
“Status?” asked Mr. Achan, in a more indignant tone.
Kappa held the silence as long as he could until he sensed the transceiver’s speaker was about to detonate.
“Sir,” said Kappa, “the two have proven to be quite the hunt.” He let in another long pause and then added, “Sir, I have never failed a mission... yet.”
Static rained from the phone. “If you fail,” said Mr. Achan with a primal growl, “I will send a hundred ships from the CF to cleanse those two. I will have them condemned as terrorists and drowned in whatever rat hole they are hiding in. And then, I will do the same to you.”
“Ah. Mr. Achan, I am glad you will not have to go to such great lengths. I am pleased to report that both subjects have been terminated with active prejudice.”
“Good. Fucking good,” said Mr. Achan with grizzly pleasure. “Payment will be sent as usual. You keep your head low.”
The call abruptly ended. Kappa turned off the transceiver and put it back in his pocket.
Zoe was staring wide eyed.
“Now we know what he’s willing to do,” said Kappa. Zoe continued to stare bewildered. “Miss Zoe? What is it?”
“That’s Achan! Alfred Achan!? That’s the man that wants us dead!? I was in his office!”
“You sure were,” replied Kappa coolly.
“Oh man! If I had known that, I would have at least broken a lamp or something.”
“Ha ha!” bellowed Kappa. “I like your spirit. Trust me, just you being there rankled him enough. Now, where do we stand?”
“You killed Dr. Saknussemm,” said Zoe bluntly.
“Yes. There is no undoing that. I am very sorry for my prior actions.”
“And Captain Henry?” asked Zoe, cringing.
“Uh, no, ma’am. I have never killed any Captain Henry.” Kappa leaned against the alley wall and sighed. “If I had a cigarette, I’d sure offer ya’ll one and have one myself too.”
“Dr. Saknussemm was innocent in all this. Pantheon Industries twisted his identity like they are ready to do to you and I,” said Zoe.
“I understand. I understand to the fullest extent. I am sorry for Doctor Saknussemm and I am prepared to do what it takes to recompense for my wrongdoings.”
It was Zoe’s turn to sigh. She took Darious’ hand and the pair stared in silence at Kappa.
“It will take some time,” she said.
Kappa nodded. “Whatever it takes.” He tipped his brimmed hat forward. “I am grateful for your amity. I, Kappa, offer myself to your cause. Whatever that cause may be. May I ask, what is the cause?”
This time, Zoe put out her hand for him to shake, which he fervently accepted. Kappa then offered his hand to Darious.
“Sir,” said Darious, bowing slightly and accepting the shake.
“So,” said Zoe, beginning to walk around in a circular pattern while staring at the stone floor, “Pantheon—they manufacture and sell, though countless subsidiaries, Kapteyn. Kapteyn, as you probably know, enables superluminal flight. It’s in all of our ships. Pantheon Industries has the complete market hold over it.”
“Yup,” said Kappa leaning back against the wall and adjusting his hat.
“Here’s the kicker, we have evidence there is something else going on regarding the stuff. Something hidden.”
Kappa eyed her with interest.
“When I ‘disappeared’ a piece of your craft, it may have disappeared to us, but it’s actually still there, existing in a higher reality than ours, that is, in a higher vibrational stable-state. There is no doubt that Pantheon knows of this, and has for some time. They had hired Dr. Saknussemm some time ago to crack this egg. There is something in there. Something that they are willing to murder people to keep a secret, yet they seem to want it destroyed and it’s all tied together by Kapteyn. We are simply trying to get to the bottom of all of this.”
“I see,” said Kappa. He spit on the floor and stood up from the wall. “Well Miss Zoe and Mister Darious, I will help however I can. I will atone for silencing your friend and all I have done to you.”
His sincerity, though untested, did bring some closure for Zoe. This was one outcome she had not foreseen when he first had them cornered. They now had an ally. Together, maybe they could find out what Pantheon was really up to.
Kappa leaned back against the wall and continued, “To make sure the right foot goes in the boot, I may have certain skills to help. As I’ve told you, I worked for the Copper Force. I was part of their Hyper-Security Division. Sometimes we saw things, never anything to do with Kapteyn or disappearing things mind you, but nonetheless things that were intriguing to a simple guy like me. Anyhow, I had joined for the adventure, but everything always became political.
“You should have been a scientist,” Zoe interposed.
“Naw. Too mind-numbing. After my second-round contract with the CF was up, I retired and went private. I’ve been working for Pantheon almost exclusively for some years now, mostly rustling up people or uncooperative businesses, but as you know, sometimes the assignment is... more than that. I suppose today, I retired again. No more bridle for me.”
“Well Kappa, we are glad to have you on board,” said Zoe.
“Indeed,” said Darious with a nod. “What are we to do now?”
“I don’t know if you noticed Darious dear,” replied Zoe, “but my ship is in no way flight-capable. The main spoiler has been nearly bent in half, struts are dead, half a dozen systems require complete overhauling, the—”
Kappa sprung from the wall. “Hey, ya’ll are in luck! We are, after all, in trader nation. All you’ll need to fix up your ship is right here, and then some. Plus, I have a credit pass here, courtesy of your buddy Achan, now loaded with mula. What do ya say? This one’s on me.”
“Kappa! Thank you!” exclaimed Zoe galvanized. She smoothed out her electric comportment. “It will also give us time to plan out our next step.”
“Sounds good,” said Kappa. “I also need make some repairs to my craft after the hell you’ve put it through. I tell ya what, I have never met a girl with more spunk than you, Zoe.”
Chapter 37
Out of the Frying Death Ray into the Sun
The Magister sat in Mr. Achan’s guest chair with his emerald robe draped around its curves like the ethane falls of Titan. The robe, an ornate green garment with gold cuffs, was nearly the same hue as the Magister’s skin and nearly as imperial as his voice. He held himself while flicking out the foot of his crossed leg every so often. His gaze slowly turned to the silk curtains and he eyed them with pompous displeasure.
“I am of the opinion,” he began patronizingly, “that those curtains are ill-fitting with the decor of this
office. They come down in long straight lines, affronting the canvas above and the curves of this desk. The lines are all wrong.” Mr. Achan, already sitting very straight at the head of the desk, sat straighter still. “Don’t you think?”
“Why yes, now that you say it,” replied Mr. Achan, setting aside the speakerphone he had just been using.
“Ah!” said the Magister. “See. All the same—spineless.” He stood up, rewrapping the robe around his plump body and tucking it in around his arms. It seemed to pour down from him. One sleeve was momentarily caught upon a gold brooch on his chest, but he easily shrugged it off. “The man you were just talking to, how loyal is he to you?”
“Very.”
“No,” the Magister sternly corrected Mr. Achan. “Your bounty hunter is no longer in your service. We both listened to the same phone call, but we heard two very different exchanges.” He stared again at the silk curtains. “All the same. In fact,” he walked over to the closed door of the office, “your service to the Magistrate is no longer needed.”
“Sir?” asked a meek Achan, like a snake upon crossing paths with a mongoose.
The Magister’s voice intensified. “Your service to Pantheon Industries is no longer needed.” His face flushed with power and pink showed through his jade skin. The Magister’s breathing soon evened out. His expression settled, and he locked eyes with Achan. “The entire situation is no longer in your hands. I will now deal with it personally. You have done enough; your risked exposing too much. You...”
The Magister seemed to lose enthusiasm for the subject and moved closer to the office door. He knocked on it just once and it promptly opened. A man of healthy proportions in a spectacularly polished suit came in. The Magister placed a fatty hand on his shoulder.
“This is your replacement.”
Achan stood up abruptly. The man pulled out a small sidearm and shot Achan in the chest. Crimson blossomed from Achan’s own perfect suit and he fell backwards.
“All the same,” remarked the Grandeur as he adjusted his robe and left the room.
It was several days into repairs and Zoe thought they were making fantastic progress. Kappa was true to his word and didn’t spare a single credit on repairing their crafts. More than that, he’d hired a local crew to help and had bought additional upgrades for Zoe’s ship. Every day he was offering something new. Darious was coming around too. Several times she saw the two laughing. It was such a relief to stop running and to have a chance to gather up her thoughts.
Darious was taking a break under the wing of her ship, avoiding the hot noon sun. He no longer wore his hoodie, instead, opting for a fit white shirt. Zoe wasn’t complaining. She took a seat on the dirt next to him.
“So, Mister, how goes it?”
He swallowed a big bite of his hot sauce-smothered sandwich. “It goes very well. We just finished up on the sinuous boosters. We will be test firing them this afternoon.”
“Great. I just installed that new theta amplifier Kappa brought over from the market.”
She watched the workers laboring around them. Lifts were attached to the thrusters and cables ran from her ship to diagnostic machines. Components and tools of all sorts were scattered about. She stared outward and shielded her eyes as a desert wind rose and swept across them. They had been towed to the outskirts of town, the best place for open work on the two custom vessels. Beyond were desert dunes, baked by the sun and echoed as far as the eye could see. Zoe shifted her gaze back to Darious’ sandwich.
“Mind if I take a bite?”
“By all means.” He handed it to her and she took a large mouthful.
“Iffs weally good,” she said chewing.
Zoe swallowed it all down and coughed once. Leaning back on the soil, she looked over at Kappa’s craft parked alongside hers. The Drak-9’s engines were being completely stripped down and rebuilt. Kappa was on top of his ship, carrying a large pipe when he chanced to spot Zoe watching him. She waved to him. He tossed the part into a junk bin and jumped down from the craft.
“Sure is a hot one,” Kappa said taking off his hat and brushing the dust from it. He dropped to a sitting position, opposite Zoe and Darious. Pointing to her ship with his hat he asked, “What do ya call your vessel?”
“Um,” said Zoe. “I usually call it ‘ship.’ Or sometimes ‘spaceship’ or ...”
Kappa looked stunned. “You call it ‘ship?’ Surely you could have named it something more imaginative. Like...” He paused, and his eyes widened as if some cosmic revelation was about to be spoken. “Starchild.” He brought up his hands with spread fingers. Kappa’s expression quickly turned flat as he stared at the faces of his dull audience.
Zoe smirked. “What hippy planet did you fly off from?”
Kappa puffed for a moment like a newly blown out candle and cooled. “Think of a good name. It’s important ya know.” He stood up and began to walk away when Zoe suddenly jumped to her feet.
“That’s it!”
He spun back around with a surprised look.
“That’s it!” Zoe repeated, full of excitement. “I know how we can find out what Pantheon is hiding! Come on! Come on!”
She heaved Darious up and quickly made her way up the new gangway with he and Kappa following.
Upon entering the main chamber, Zoe tugged open a drawer and an old monitor unfolded from it. She fumbled behind the screen, pulling out a physical keyboard. She blew the dust from it and held it up.
“That?” asked Kappa. “That is what you are going to use to outsmart the multi-quintillion credit, galactic conglomerate of Pantheon Industries?
“Ones and Os baby,” said Zoe, pulling up a chair and setting the keyboard on her lap. She flipped a switch behind the monitor. The screen turned blue. Lines of coding quickly scrolled upwards and then the screen went black. A white command prompt appeared in the upper left corner. It contained a single question.
Password?
“Turn your heads guys,” said Zoe. She looked back and saw them staring. “I’m serious.”
They did so, and she quickly typed out ‘notsofastoryoullmissaletter’ and pressed enter on the mechanical keyboard. The monitor rolled through more pages of coding. At its end was a list of folders in alphabetical order.
“Okay gentlemen, you may look.”
They turned and peered at the screen. Darious leaned in very close, reading through the listing.
“I do not understand Zoe. What is it?” he asked.
“This is the backbone to a program I scripted a couple years ago.” Zoe looked at Kappa. “Let’s call it Wiggles. Wiggles was too dangerous to keep on my ship’s mainframe, so I decided best to keep it on an old computing machine. Nowadays no one even knows how to operate one of these bad boys. Pretty smart eh?”
Darious nodded.
“So, what is it Miss Zoe?” asked Kappa, standing straight and crossing his arms.
“It’s basically a communication worm. It exists within a transmission—like a phone call or a download—pieced up within each data packet and acting as a whole where the communication’s harmonic nodes exist. While pieced up, the worm has the appearance of the normally accepted corruption margins in interstellar communications and is thus ignored by the receiving ship. Now, I originally built Wiggles to duplicate information of a receiving ship’s computer, but I can program it to do other things. You see, it’s meant to copy and send back all those captured data bits in the same pieced up manner to one predetermined point—aka my ship. Once the data from the poor sap has been assimilated, the worm replicates on from that location, via the next transmitted signal. If it can’t go anywhere, it simply shrivels up into nothing. At the end of the day, the worm is gone—no evidence—just sweet, sweet data gems. Though, I’ve only tried it with relatively close communications in a closed test, as I have to know the identifying protocol of each ship for the worm to move on.”
“Alrighty,” said Kappa. His expression led Zoe to believe it hadn’t all sunk in. “I still don’t see why
ya keep it on this antique?”
“Well,” she said, reminding herself of the tone Professor Kring often used with his pupils. “Imagine if this worm was sent out from a transmitter station capable of sending both high and low communications—say a CF broad communicator—and having a large catalog of buddy CF ships.” Zoe put out her hands, mimicking a ship with each. “Buddy ships allow communications to and from other buddies, like a highway right to the heart of each ship. This happens in the background of all our communications networks; once your ship is allowed to talk to another, it’s basically there. As far as anyone is concerned, it’s an unbreakable technology; makes sense too because any extra burden—say eavesdropping—on a communication line is easily distinguishable and would be nulled by the ship. Not Wiggles. Wiggles is special. Wiggles can ride those waves and not be seen.
“Back to buddy ships; Wiggles gets transmitted out to buddies. It duplicates and is sent onward from those ships to more buddy ships and more ships. Any identified friend becomes another target for Wiggles. Now do you get it? I don’t want to be responsible for accidentally hacking the entire galaxy. That’s just a bit illegal. It’s simply safer being tucked away.”
“Son of a gun,” said Kappa.
“Zoe,” said Darious, “this program is very clever. However...” He paused but she motioned for him to continue. “However, isn’t the program limited to a vector of transmission? In your example, the worm, I mean Wiggles, is sent by a CF ship to other CF ships and so on. This could potentially be crippling for the CF, which is more than reason enough to have this program separate from any computer capable of communicating, as you have done, but I believe it would stop there. Once Wiggles has exhausted a friend registry, it is done. My thought is Wiggles could possibly penetrate a portion of the galaxy, but thankfully hacking the ‘entirety’ of the galaxy would require a good deal more ships, id est, many that are non-CF associated and independent.”
