by Juno Wells
“Would you calm down? I’m ten steps ahead of you. Remember, I’m the brains of this operation, okay?” I said, mentally rolling my eyes. “Now sit back down and I’ll tell you what I mean.”
He did, whipping the chair around so he could rest his arms on the chair back. He raised his eyebrows in a ‘well?’ attitude.
“Yes, she probably does know already, so in that, we won’t have to tell her,” I began. “Not to mention, I have every other server in this galactic area hacked, so if anyone tries to avoid us by using one of them, they’ll be out of luck as I’ll be there. The second one of those CPUs touches another computer or scanner—or camera eye, for that matter—I will know.”
He nodded, “Okay. That still doesn’t explain how the hell we’re gonna deal with the boss then, does it?”
“Hang on, I’m getting there, geez. So, with all that being said, if she asks I will present her with this solution. And, at the point of being able to track who and where, I can then set up a bounty and whoever brings him in will be rewarded,” I finished. I had to hand it to myself, I was good.
“How’d you know it’s a he?” Ben said, squinting at me. I again had the urge to roll my non-existent eyes.
“Because, Ben, if you watch closely, and do all the diagnostics and analyze the footage slowly, you can tell by the body movement, length and size of limbs, shape of torso, etc., that that is a GUY.” Despite having the calm voice, I was happy I could still use sarcasm. And it sounded killer.
Ben nodded again, then stood up, stretching. “Ya know, I don’t always like when you take that tone with me, missy.”
“Ya know, I don’t always like when you’re purposefully being thick,” I retorted quickly.
“If you were here, if you had a body, I swear I’d hit ya,” Ben said, wagging his fist. God, he was so adorable.
“You’re not a lady hitter, Ben. You and I both know that,” I said. Adorable.
“Well, I don’t see any lady, do you?” he said, smiling his bright smile. “Now, girlie, it’s been fun dancing wiff ya, but I’ve gotta run from the ball before I turn into a pumpkin.” He gave me a sweeping bow, winked, then walked out.
“Give my regards to your fairy godmother!” I shouted after him. I heard him laughing before the door closed.
“Gosh, Ben, I enjoy these little talks of ours.”
He really was the best guy from the gang. Whenever anyone else beeped for an audience, my very good, very trained patience was tested.
Oops, speak of the devil, here was another one now. The ping was showing up in the left of my field of vision. Goblyn. Yuk. Out of all the bozos, I didn’t know WHY he was hired.
I accepted the request, and my screen changed as I showed up in Geraldt Goblyn’s monitor screen. It was black, however, like he’d covered up the camera.
“What the hell, Gerry?” I said. I gave this guy literally NO patience.
All I could hear was grunting and more grunting. “HEY ASSHOLE!” I shouted.
“Oh fuck! NO NO I DON’T NEED YOU. MISDIAL, MISDIAL!” Geraldt shouted back.
I hung up quickly, going back to my home screen. Gross. Very happy he had blocked the screen, because THAT was the last thing I wanted to store in my memory banks. Yeesh.
I started running the diagnostics for the interstellar program, then opened up another screen and replayed the vid of our little thief from Kelsor 9, our carrier vessel. I turned on all the cameras in the vicinity. Nothing. He was like a ghost. I was impressed—I had to hand it to the guy, he definitely knew what he was doing, and did it well.
For shits and giggles, not that I thought I’d find anything, I ran a scan of all the records of the prisons from here to the ends of the galaxy. Anyone who fit the description of…I paused the vid of him walking through the corridor…six foot two…not overly bulky, more lean muscled…with a size…measuring the image….eleven shoe. The scanner ran through the names, flicking images a mile a minute. While this worked, I opened another screen and checked for any CPU alerts over the stars. Nothing.
Okay, fine. My scanner pinged, and I flicked the screen in first view. Seven, out of every prison in the galaxy, fit this description. Interesting. I checked over them, one by one. Ugly, ugly, dead, still in prison, two broke out of prison and were seen at a jewel heist on Monaccoa (not our guy) and the last one…was unaccounted for. Okay, let’s see who we got.
Ryker Fitzwillard
Serial No. 4473-0LQ22W
Basics- Humanoid Morboid, tan, grey eyes, six foot two, gladiator style, sandy hair.
I merely skimmed over the rest of the data, bored quickly. This, also, was not our guy. Which I already knew. I knew none of them would be. If, on the off chance, our guy was in prison for a stint, the record would be gone. More likely, he never went to prison. This guy covered his tracks like a figure skater can glide on one foot—nay, on one thin blade of metal going twenty plus mph as she lifted the other leg above her head.
I was finally, FINALLY, challenged. Mua-ha-ha.
PING!
Oh joy. The boss.
I beeped myself onto her screen immediately. “Hello, Zellman! How may I assist you today?” I don’t get cheeky with my boss, just everyone else.
“What the hell?” Ms. Zellman’s voice rang through every bit of the microphone. “Who the hell is this?” She pulled up the screen she was looking at, which now I was looking at too.
It was the video of the thief, possibly hunky, and dangerous.
“That is a little problem,” I said, the calm voice without sarcasm.
“A little problem?” Zellman said flatly. She looked at me, the little black camera set into her computer. She walked over to her second mate, Lukas Blackwater, a human-sized man with grey eyes and pale, pasty skin, two long fangs poking out at either side of his mouth and a dead look on his creepy face. She flicked her fingers at him, gloved in elegant black satin, and in seconds he’d put a cigarette in between them and lit it. She took a long drag before turning back to me, the cool and collected look of calculating murder she wore so well.
“Explain,” she ordered.
I laid out the plan for her, less crass and smart-ass than I had done with Ben. Not that she would dispose of me like so many of her little failed-henchmen; I was too valuable. But I wouldn’t want to risk it.
She inhaled another long drag from her cigarette, her yellow eyes burning into the optics of my cam.
“Are you…one hundred percent sure you can catch him?” she asked, cooly.
“Yes, Ms. Zellman,” I said.
“Because, if this gets out, it could create quite the, uh, uproar from both authorities and our most dedicated clients on the black market. I can’t afford to lose favor with either. Or if the authorities get cocky…I can’t have them thinking we’re easy pickings. You need to handle this. Now.” She turned to Blackwater, who looked up at her with his soulless eyes, like some skeleton that had animated itself and threw skin over its bones in a pale attempt to blend in.
“Take your men and move out. I want everyone on that ship neutralized. If they cannot be made to forget, then make history forget them, understand?” she ordered. He nodded and left without another word.
“Aurora?” she said quietly.
Fuck. “Yes, Ms. Zellman.”
“I thought I told you to handle it now,” she said in a low voice, her yellow eyes screaming bloody murder.
“Yes, Ms. Zellman,” I said.
“Well then, fuck off! Be about your business and don’t come back until I’ve called!” She waved her hands and then walked to the door, cigarette in hand and pulling a knife from her calf strap. “I’m in the mood for some fresh meat.”
I left immediately, back to my home screen. I didn’t need to see her slaughter anyone for the hell of it like she’d done countless times before. As much as I tried to put those images in the trash file, I couldn’t seem to forget them, which I found odd and disturbing. Shrugging off the past mental images, I set to work doing more scans and ca
mera ghost-watching in search of our thief. I knew I would find him sooner or later. I had to. All the while, those murderous videos and pictures nagged at the back of my mind, though I wasn’t sure why. I was an AI. I wasn’t supposed to care.
Chapter 4
August Wood
I ducked under the sliding titanium shield door as the security droids rounded the corner and aimed their blasters right at me. The door shut with a hiss, and I scampered up, sprinting down the next hallway to the escape pods.
Blasts fired over my head, skimming my hood by mere threads.
I slid open the doors as I saw the security droids coming nearer and dove inside, locking it behind me. Then hit the latches, pressed the buttons and pulled down on the joystick until BOOM, I’d ejected off from the main. I didn’t look back to see who or if anyone was following me. I put up the shields and hit the hyper-space into gear.
With a blinding zap, I disappeared from the Alpha Zeta Y ship in a burst of white light, appearing lightyears away by the planet Gideon and its thirteen little moons. Not bad, not a bad turnout at all.
There was a red blinking on the data screen on my left eye, indicating damage, and by the looks of the symbol with the red, it showed I was losing blood fast. I looked down and saw one of the blasters had nicked my stomach and I was dripping dark red onto the floor. Dang. Well, could’ve been worse.
“That’s right, it could’ve been your head, you reckless ass.” Iki, the little fairy goblin with its creepy mind-reading, blurted in my earpiece.
“Ouch, hey, not so loud,” I said.
“Not so loud? You watch that complaining tone with me. You could’ve had your head blown clean off, and then where would you be? You’d be dead, that’s right, and who would take over your father’s estate? That’s right, NO ONE. It’d be sold off, all your generations and generations of legacy spoiled by one foolish child with a death wish. You ungrateful-”
I shut the earpiece off with one poke at the controls in my forearm, pulled down my facial covering and hood, and rubbed my eyes.
I couldn’t deal with my father’s right hand right now. No, I couldn’t deal with my father’s right hand ever. It had been squawking at me incessantly since day one.
I shook my head. I needed to get back to my ship before I bled to death in this puny pod. I pulled out my tracking device. Two more light years to the Polaris-star side. Okay, here we go.
I redirected the pod to Polaris-star side, and in another blast of light, I was there, floating beside my ship. I steered the little pod up and in, through the blaster doors. My ship, the Philip, was amazing. I’d half built it myself, and I couldn’t help but admire my handiwork as I docked. Sleek and black and aerodynamic. Half extra high tech and half jenkied together like something of a pirates’ ship.
I stumbled out of the landing door and called for my medic before falling onto my knees.
Flora, a tiny wood nymph with green eyes and leaves sprouting all over her, scurried over to me with an expandable gurney and her doctors kit.
“Master!” she squeaked, and flopped me onto the gurney. “Are you going to continue littering yourself with holes before your birthday?” She dabbed a stinky mud onto my wound, which stung.
“AHH! Easy. I’m not doing it intentionally,” I said, gritting my teeth as she went for another round. “If I were, I’d at least make some kind of pattern, you know, for art’s sake.”
She rolled her eyes at me, shaking her head. “You know, I’ve treated other young boys before.”
“Men,” I corrected her.
“Yeah, I’ll call you that when you start acting like one,” she retorted. “But all of them had a wee bit more sense than you. What’d you go in there for anyway? Treasure? Jewels? A girl? Oooh, it better be a girl. Then I wouldn’t be so cross with you.” She globbed more stinging mud onto my open wound, making me clench my eyes tight, gripping the sides of the gurney, trying to control my breathing through the pain.
When it eased up, I pulled out a tiny memory card chip and a floppy disk from my jacket pocket.
“This and this,” I said.
She looked at me flatly. “What the hell are those?”
I chuckled, and then winced because I had flexed the muscles in my stomach, and currently the hole oozing blood was not having it.
“Treasure, Flora. These are treasure. The information on here could make and break several enterprises, companies, gangs and even a few corrupt political figures on Guaem. Not bad.”
“So, what, you hold them for ransom?” she asked me, pasting a few self-sealing bandages over and around my torso that fitted right to my skin when set down.
“Something like that. Use them as leverage, demand they change or else. Depends on what they’re doing and how bad it is,” I said, laying my head back.
“Master, I really hope you know what you’re doing,” she said, pressing the little hover button on my gurney, directing it to my chambers.
“Always,” I said before drifting into sleep.
A few days went by before I felt proper and well enough to get up and go. I hobbled over to my cockpit/control room and sat down at the desk. I plugged in the floppy disk and the little memory chip and let my computer run through the data, the uploading icon turning around and around.
“Computer! Play some music,” I requested and leaned back. I hadn’t bothered to put on a shirt, but instead threw my woolen blanket over my shoulders and held it with one hand. I spun around in my chair while waiting for all the data to be gone through, music playing in the background. Flora had done a pretty good job patching me back up. She said my skin was coming back together and she would try her best to ensure it didn’t scar, but no promises. This was about the best I could’ve hoped for in that situation. Honestly, if I’d been hit three or four inches higher, bam. Goner. Then my dad would really be pissed.
The computer trilled its completion of the data as a call came in. I groaned when I saw who it was.
“Hello, Father!” I greeted him with mock enthusiasm, though the undercurrent of my tone was less than enthusiastic.
“I swear, if you get yourself blown up, I am going to have you cloned and your clone will be my heir, you hear me? A clone. How can you do this to me? Your father? What would your mother think of you out and about, rubbing elbows with thieves and thugs, getting shot at? How dare you, do you know who you are?” He went on and on, but I turned the volume down on his vid screen and allowed my thoughts to wander.
I didn’t know how I was expected to stay on that rock, where there were only servants and my dad’s house. The only people I had ever liked were at school, but that was taken from me, too. The thought of all those people in that fire…I rubbed my face with one hand, giving the arm nearest my bandaged left side a break so I didn’t accidentally reopen it before it’d even finished closing.
Finally, it looked like my father was done. I turned the volume back up. “Got it all out of your system?” I asked.
“Listen, you little shit, how dare you talk to me this way? I’m only looking out for your safety!”
“Listen, Dad, I understand you think you know what’s best for me, but you might not! You can’t keep me cooped up on that rock forever. Now, I’ll be home in time for my birthday, don’t you worry, and I’ll keep myself fine and safe. Now, goodbye for now. Over and out.” I was about to press the end button when premature guilt seized me, so I threw in a “I love you” and then hung up.
I felt silly that I couldn’t hang up on the guy. Even in our fights it was like this. Especially since Mother had died. Or disappeared; we honestly weren’t sure.
I picked up the CPUs that I’d nabbed a few weeks ago, turning them over in my hands carefully. I figured I’d give it another try. When I first tried to open then and scan them, my computer caught a tracker going out, and I had to shut it down immediately.
Whoever programmed these was not messing around. “Computer! Disconnect from online,” I ordered. I hear the little downward trill tune an
d that was my cue to go. I hooked up the CPU in the scanner dish and began scoping it out. A few hours went by. Flora came in at some point and gave me a fresh cup of coffee, my life blood, muttered something insulting, then left. “I appreciate you!” I called after her but didn’t take my eyes off my work. Then a moment of silence and reading through the code…
PING.
I stopped, staring at my screen, my heart beating rapidly. A little message was printed on a white square in the middle of the data I’d been reading, which said:
Found you.
Chapter 5
Aurora Intelligence aka A.I.
I laughed. Genuinely. I knew he could elude me for some time, but not indefinitely. And after weeks, WEEKS of not a single peep, having to watch not one, but three more of his little breaking, entering and stealing videos from ships at different points in the galaxy, finally, I got a signal. Which meant our little fox had set off an alarm in the system without being any the wiser.
I was intrigued by this guy. He was the only one in…well, a while, who’d given me a remotely hard time. Bravo to him.
I decided to have a chat with him, maybe gloat a little, we’d see.
I video pinged him. It only took about four rings before he accepted. Ha, knew he would.
His video came on, all blackened. Smart boy. Well, not really, as I already had his location.
“No video? How rude,” I said.
“Well, with respect, Your Creepiness, you don’t have one either,” he said. He had a nice, sexy sounding voice. A cheeky sort of tone. I liked it.
“Well, I have the excuse of having no body,” I quipped. “What’s yours?”
“No body? Am I being haunted?” he asked. I could hear a rolling chair twisting.
“Something like that,” I said. “Now come on, let’s see your handsome mug. That is, unless you’re ugly.”