The Corrupted Star

by Martin HC

“It's an AI, I don't think it understands humour.”

  “Shut up.”

  He never liked her, she'd always been rude, bossy and pompous, but technically also in charge, so in secret he was happy when she failed. It served to remind her that she was not all great.

  “Contact the Saracen, we'll use their ECM systems and perform a direct transmission hack.”

  “I'm not so sure that's a good idea, did you see what she did to my equipment?”

  “You're joking right, this old piece of crap is nothing compared to an ECM, cruiser and you can stop calling it she, it's just an avatar, it's nothing more than an it.”

  Serena wasn't taking too kindly to the insults, she would let them attempt to hack her, then really turn things up a notch and test her new systems.

  “Oh you didn't like that did you, or is it just very clever programming. I will shut you down, then wipe you from the AI matrix altogether,” the senior tech promised. “What are you waiting for? Do what I say and contact the Saracen, but don't tell them about your equipment.”

  Silent Frustrations and Firearm Hiccups

  “How long have you been with Osthorpe on the Ophelia, and how do you know this man?” the interrogator indicated to an image of Haydn, continuing his questioning after getting again no response. “What is your position in all of this?”

  “We can continue like this as long as you like, we have all the time in the world, you don't,” after getting still no reply from Brenn.

  This had gone on for a while now, the man hadn't spoken a single word since being taken, he only eyed and grinned at people, occasionally grunting in amusement at their disdain in getting no answer from him. Now the interrogator was becoming impatient.

  Brenn was shackled to the desk during the questioning, rudimentary steel cuffs had been applied to his wrists and deliberately over-tightened, it was an old tactic, simple, painful and always worked to get tempers rising.

  Standing now, the interrogator's intended aggression was clear on his face as he walked around the table.

  “There's only us two in this room, no one is watching, if I chose to draw my gun, put it to your knee and pull the trigger,” he went through the motions slowly as he spoke the words, stopping only short at firing. “Who could help you, you're alone here and in my power now.”

  Still no response, though the smirk was no longer there, progress he thought.

  “But, we don't have to resort to barbaric acts such as those, do we,” he said while slowly sliding the weapon back into the holster on his leg. “All you have to do is tell me what I want to know, who is the man in the display?”

  Deciding to turn it up a notch, he grabbed Brenn's ear, and wrenched his head around to meet his own stare.

  “Tell me, tell me or I'll have the information burned from your lips instead,” he screamed, his face only inches from Brenn's now, spit from his shouting making the other man's face twitch.

  Brenn only grinned again and in response he threw his hand out, smashing Brenn's face.

  “Keep grinning you fool, it will only make things more fun for me.”

  The interrogator sighed, straightened, turned and walked away from Brenn, slowly making his way back around the table, as if calming himself down.

  “If this is how things are going to be, if this is how you intend to push my patience then I promise you, all you'll do is bring more pain to yourself... and your friends.”

  He finally looked at Brenn while sitting back down, looking for any change in his demeanour at the mentioning of his friends suffering, and there was a change, one that set about a moment of almost intense confusion, a change he tried to mentally correct in front of him.

  The interrogator sat, trying to figure out why the brutish looking man's wrists were no longer shackled, compounding the mystery was that he was holding the interrogator's own pistol, studying it as if he was thinking of keeping it.

  Brenn's eyes looked up now to meet his own, and he pointed the weapon at him, holding it loosely while swaying it around a little as he seemingly tried to make up his mind about using it.

  He only grinned again and as if coming to a decision, disarmed the weapon's power core and lay it down on the table, then held up his hands and wriggled his fingers to mock the man.

  He didn't get a chance to ask Brenn how he'd done it or move to pick the weapon back up, the door burst open and in rushed four armed men, tackling Brenn down, shackling him once more and dragging him out. The interrogation ended, leaving the man sitting stupefied in his chair and uncertain of what to do next, still trying to figure out the exact moment Brenn had slipped the over-tightened cuffs.

  When the Door Just Won't Open

  They'd attempted everything to get through the doorway, their cutting lasers however were just not good enough to penetrate the alloy of the door and surrounding walls, they had even attempted the use of small breaching charges but still no penetration.

  There were three doors in total to the engineering section of the ship and so far none of the teams had had any success, their scanning technology could not even penetrate the doors to return any information on the room interior.

  “How are we doing on the manual door hack, surely we can break the electronics on this door.”

  “We're almost there sir, I'm just running through the hack coding again to make sure there are no issues.”

  “Let me know when you're good to go.”

  “Yes sir, one more minute.”

  It had been a tedious wait for team one's engineer to find the necessary intrusion point, and then to write the hack coding to override the door controls.

  The three team leaders made a bet before starting, the last through would pick up the next week of sleep shift duties for the first, and patience was wearing thin.

  “OK, we're good to go sir,” the engineer finally told the officer.

  “Good, let's open this door then.”

  “Running by-pass, hacking door systems, uploading new system code, installing aaaaannnnd finished, the door's unlocked.”

  “Good work, son,” the team leader said as he stepped to the door's edge and hit the control switch.

  “Nothing's happening, why is nothing happening?”

  “I don't understand sir, the code was fine, everything uploaded and installed as it should have, something should have happened.”

  “Well evidence suggests otherwise doesn't it, try to upload it again.”

  “Yes sir, but maybe I should first re... wait, something is happening sir, oh, the atmosphere is being sucked from the corridor sir.”

  “Masks masks masks,” the officer shouted, and everyone rapidly pulled on their thin self sealing breather units.

  “Right, I need you to unscrew this situation that you've just screwed us into, you're supposed to be an expert man.”

  “Excuse me sir, I am a specialist engineer and I do know how to write a simple door code, besides the point, the door circuits are independent, they shouldn't be tied to environmental control whatsoever.”

  “What would you suggest next then?”

  “I'm not sure yet, but I can try the same code from a different terminal, this boat's so old maybe they've botched the wiring somehow.”

  “The problem with that theory being, the structural material is better than ours and everything seems new. They appear to have better programming capabilities too, but please, by all means, find another jacking point and try it again.”

  Which the engineer did, ignoring the officers sarcasm and re-installing the code directly into the door's switching control, by-passing the computer.

  This time he nodded to the officer when complete and so the officer nodding back, simply indicated for him to attempt to open it.

  The effects this time weren't slowly recognised, it was more immediate, firstly the door didn't open, which indicated the task had failed but then when the gravity disappeared people just swore, especially those that hadn't activated in time the magnetic locks in the soles of their boo
ts.

  Three of the five man team spun in the corridor as their bodies continued all prior movement's momentum, the officer who fortunately managed to keep himself in place stared at the engineer in irritation.

  “Can you make this situation any worse for me?” the lighting cut at the end of the question, plunging them into darkness.

  Meanwhile, sat at a desk on the other side of the door, was the kid, watching them via a live holo feed and who just couldn't help herself at the officers last comment. She pulled from her pocket a long thing object wrapped in a brown paper-like material, she unwrapped it then began to bite and chew on the tough edible. Arlan still hadn't figured out where she was getting it, they certainly didn't have it on the ship, he suspected she was making it herself somehow but had no idea how.

  She'd switch the gravity back on later, but for now she thought it best to go back to door two and dial the gravity back down to a standard one G, team two were still pinned to the floor and she couldn't have them falling unconscious, they're much more fun awake.

  A Girl Just Loves Her Hair

  The questioning wasn't going well so far, he'd gained little of use from her and icy blue eyes stared back the entire time. Although she'd begun to falter now, small changes in her facial expressions showing the more he picked away at her.

  “What's with the mute?” he asked Jill. “Why won't he talk?”

  “I didn't know mutes could talk,” she answered.

  A guard suppressed a snigger, only just, there were three of them in the room for this interview and the interrogator was unarmed, her arms were bound to the table by high tech, electronically locked braces.

  “This is no laughing matter, I'm not certain you're aware of how serious a situation you're in, has your captain told you? Or did he lead you blindly along?”

  “You'll have to explain this situation you mean,” he reminded her of a rodent she thought.

  “Espionage, murder,” the rodent continued, nodding to the blades sat on the table beside him.

  They were simple in their design, long, thin, sharp, pointed, and were found strapped to her back under her long jacket, now they lay on the table, still stained with their previous victims blood.

  “The murders, plural, I remember clearly, but that was more a bit of sport, espionage I know nothing about,” she came back, her hair flashed with a purplish sheen before returning to its original black.

  “A fancy trick, how did you come to get hair like that?”

  “I know a guy.”

  He paused for a few seconds to stare her down, and failed.

  “Tell us about this man and girl, where are they and their ship?” he spoke, pointing to a holo image which appeared just above head height over the table, his voice loud and assertive.

  “I've never met him,” her attitude faltered slightly on seeing the image.

  He always found the soft spot, it was what he was good at, to pick up on the small things, like the use of him instead of them.

  “You can't hide the truth,” he told her as the image backed out, showing them walking behind her through the Grinder space station's market place. “The engineer told us of your involvement with him already, so just tell us what you know,” he spoke with calm conviction in his entire demeanour.

  “Arlan, he couldn't have, he was on the ship the whole time,” she answered, the fear was showing now in her face and eyes.

  He had her, this was how it always worked, they would come in strong at first, defiant and fearless, slowly but surely though he would break them, the mute thought he'd won but after seeing the video of his scum partner breaking now, he would crack too.

  “Well he did, and he was all too happy to give you up, give you all up, anything to stay out of a penal colony,” the words flowed from him like water from a tap, he had his string and he would pull.

  “You don't understand, it's not like that, we're not spies.”

  “Then tell me who he is, where is he?” His voiced raised now, he could see the fear in her eyes, “tell me what you know or I'll have your fingers broken one by one.”

  “Alright, please,” Jill pleaded, “I'll tell you, I'll tell you everything, just please let me go,” she almost sobbed.

  She looked frightening when she came in, the blood on her hair and face, her eyes burning through anyone brave enough to meet her gaze and the red stained blades stripped from her person, now she just looked like a pathetic child, playing an adults game.

  “We can see you don't belong in this, you've been manipulated by this man, just tell us what you know, if you've done nothing wrong then we'll have no more reason to keep any of you here,” he spoke patiently, now was the time to be gentle and let her hope for an escape.

  “We went to a bar on the station, we set it all up, he was determined to find out, he just wouldn't let it go.”

  “Tell us his name, what did he want to find out?” the interrogator demanded to know.

  “He tried so hard, but no matter how hard he tried, he just couldn't change his hair colour like me, then he even tried to get me back to my room but I was having none of it.”

  She smiled mischievously and stared back from under her fringe at the interrogator, the panic in her voice was gone and her eyes were alight with humour. What pushed him over the edge though was the muffled snigger from the guard behind him.

  “You think this is funny, do you want us to hurt you and your friends,” the interrogator fired at her, slamming his fist on the table.

  “OK, maybe I let him kiss me but he was too drunk to remember and it was all my fault, I told him it was willpower that let me change my hair colour but after he kept...”

  “I wonder what he'll think after I've shaved it all off,” he snapped, looking to her bloodied dagger and lifting it.

  It was fast, too fast for him to understand exactly how it happened, but just as he lifted the dagger, she'd also moved. The woman covered in another man's blood was now no longer bound to the table, but was coming over it towards the rodent.

  Jill body slammed him to the floor, his chair skittered away and the dagger that was in his hand was now in hers, she raised her bloodstained body and face above his own, her movements were deliberate, graceful and her eyes spoke his death sentence as the dagger poised to strike at his head.

  The yelping fear he heard was his own, at almost a shrill it sounded more like a wounded creature than a cry for help, he was so consumed with fear that he just backed himself into the corner of the room as the guards tackled her down. One wrapped himself around her arm to prevent her from using the dagger, and the second slamming her to the wall. Her eyes remained fixed on the rodent the entire time.

  “My hair, my hair, I'll tear your throat out,” she screamed.

  Her voice terrified him, but more so when she began to overpower her guards, dragging them towards the interrogator. It was the third guard that ended the charade by electrocuting her, and one of his comrades in the process. Incredibly it took two more attempts before she dropped the blade and fell to her knees, they grabbed her arms and dragged her from the room. The rodent remained, shaking in the corner and looking at the empty restraint braces still attached to the table.

  Fair Warnings and Deeper Insights

  “Are we set up yet?” she snapped.

  “The Saracen is in position, they're standing by to begin the transmission hack.”

  “Why have you not started it yet then?”

  “I'm trying to open their comms network, allow us minimum resistance to access for when the Saracen begins her work.”

  “That's completely unnecessary, these systems could never hold out against a trans hack.”

  “Yes maybe, but if we have no open channels the hack will take a lot longer, regardless of how old the systems are, I tried to open one and she just shut down the comms system, completely.”

  “Move out the way, let me try,” her rudeness was really beginning to grate on him, so far she'd shown little of any real talent, and he couldn't f
athom why she'd thought herself so good.

  It went as expected, she hit away at some keys for a while, attempting to open a channel, looked at the display for a while longer then tried again to open another, but the console was locked down.

  “I'm sorry, information access denied, administrator permissions required.”

  “Seriously, come on, what is not locked down?” she ground out in frustration. “AI, how can we open the communications network interface?”

  Nothing was going to work he knew, so the junior tech got up behind her and began unpacking a remote comms receiver.