Eye of the Abyss

by Michael Formichelli

  She nodded, zooming out. Movement caught her eye, and she turned to see three figures making their way down the main avenue.

  Three contacts are headed this way. Go quiet, she signaled Iapetus. Non-verbal communications only.

  She jumped down into a three-point landing beside him and headed down a narrow side-street on light feet. He shimmered and vanished when his stealth mode went active. The only indication he was still with her was the faint crunching sound his feet made on the sand-strewn ground. Together they moved through the shadows cast by the houses, dodging from one to the other using the tactical program linking her cerebral implant to his neocortical processor to synchronize their movements. The same program would prevent them from shooting each other should a firefight break out, but she hoped it wouldn’t come to that. She was sure that any gunfire with the new arrivals would attract the Praetor’s attention. There was no sense in risking her life when she was so close to finally getting off this dead moon.

  She stopped at the intersection with the main avenue, and used her cyber-enhanced eyes to sweep the full EM spectrum up and down the roads. She spotted two of the contacts, humanoids in civilian envirosuits standing near one of the hanging bodies beneath a lamppost. The main street was the worst place to be during the Siren massacre, and that memory kept her from using it in the months since. Unlike the other roads, bodies swung from every post, and at the height of the slaughter blood ran ankle-deep through its gutters.

  The humanoids before her—males, or at least of a species without breasts—had the circle and three lines of House Mitsugawa emblazoned on their shoulders. The sight of it brought a frown to her face. Were they with the Mitsugawa or were they pirates who managed to raid a Mitsugawa commercial vessel? The latter possibility brought her left hand down to the butt of her CG-90 “Growler” heavy pistol, and she thumbed the holster’s latch open. They were lucky these last couple of months, no pirates had come by looking for an easy score. It was a small blessing she attributed to having shut down the colony’s beacon. True, a pirate ship would mean a chance to escape this hellish exile, but pirates were more likely to sell her off to the Orgnan than actually help her—especially if they found out she was Confederate military. She didn’t want to leave this world that way. What she hoped for was a merchant ship coming for fuel. Merchants she could negotiate passage with, maybe as far as the sector capital where she could get on a civilian transport and head to Kosfanter to nail the people who left her here to die.

  One of the men in the e-suits looked up and down the street, shuffled about, then seemed to stare at her for a moment before pointing in her direction. She tensed, her eyes darting back and forth between them. The second hadn’t moved as the first fidgeted, but when the first pointed he turned his head in her direction. Meia gritted her teeth, waiting.

  The first male nodded after a moment. Something startled him and he turned and pointed down the street back towards the landing pads. Meia tensed, thinking that one of his companions must be on the way to meet him. She wondered how many there might be as she waited for the mystery being to step into view. The first male moved forward, then turned back to the second who was now looking down the street as well. Then the second male’s head exploded.

  The crack of the gunshot broke through the hiss of the dust-laden wind a split-second later, and Meia dropped into a crouch, drawing her pistol in the same motion. The first male jerked as a blue stunner-beam struck him. His body convulsed hard enough to throw itself back on the ground. She readied herself to target and fire on whatever it was that shot him.

  Are there two groups? Were there two ships? she sent to Iapetus. I only saw one on the platforms. What happened to the third contact?

  “Location of third contact unknown. I detected only one group. The Praetor is approaching,” he responded.

  Shit! Withdraw, she sent and retreated down the side street before ducking into a doorway to watch what happened next.

  The Praetor showed up in the intersection. The tails of his black long coat fluttered behind him in the grainy wind when he picked up the body of the man in the e-suit and threw him over his shoulder. Meia ducked her head back as the Praetor turned, holding her breath for as long as she could before daring to look down the street again. When she did the intersection was empty.

  “The Praetor is headed for a nearby dwelling,” Iapetus reported. Concealed from the electromagnetic spectrum he was able to observe and report from the corner even though the Praetor was only steps from him. For what must be the millionth time, she thanked his parent AI for sending him to her.

  Okay, we know where the Praetor and two of the three I saw before are now. Let’s have a look at that ship while they’re occupied with each other. Fear combined with excitement as she jogged across the street and followed a path parallel to the main road. Whoever these people were, she hoped they came to Calemni using a ship with an AlCas drive. Such vessels were slow by comparison to the neutronium-reactor FTL ships, but she grew up on her father’s scout ship, and knew how to handle a long, deep-space voyage necessitated by the slower speed. The prospect of finally getting off this death-pit was enough to make her mouth water and her palms sweat.

  Take it slow, she told herself as she hurried down the street. If you rush you might screw up and never leave this place. There could be more of them on the ship. Pirates usually work in large groups, she reminded herself. She had to use all of her willpower not to run for the strange, black vessel. It had been months, after all, and this was her first chance to escape Calemni and get revenge on the bastards that stranded her here.

  She was buzzing when she reached the broad street separating the landing pads and warehouses from the rest of the colony. She paused with her hand pressed to the grainy wall of a printed building across from the vessel and watched. With no activity around the craft for several minutes, she decided to take a chance and ran for the lip of the landing pad. She crouched at the last minute and slid in the dirt, coming to rest beside it. She could taste the sandy air on the back of her tongue, and hoped it was a flavor she would never experience again.

  The strange ship was only meters from her. It didn’t appear that she’d been spotted, but she couldn’t help the anxiety that welled up within her. Training, and her own suspicious nature, held her ballooning need to rush forward in check. The hairs on the back of her neck tingled as she listened to the faint hiss of the vessel’s aegis field, and she felt the vibration of the fuel pumps beneath the platform running. She was in luck. The aegis field had to be tuned to allow matter through with the fuel line connecting the tanks to the ship. A quick glance over the lip of the platform revealed the long, black snake of the line running through the soap-bubble-like shimmer that marked the field’s boundary. She also saw another goddessend: there were no crew members outside watching the vessel’s open access ramp. That was a bad mistake; refueling was one of the most vulnerable operations a ship carried out in hostile territory. Maybe they thought this planet was uninhabited after scanning the surface from orbit? Maybe they thought the bird-like form of her C-37 resting on the adjacent platform belonged to the dead colonists? It didn’t matter. They made a critical error, and she was ready to take advantage of it.

  Iapetus? she transmitted, seeking out the ghostly silhouette their link projected into her vision to mark his presence.

  “I’m by the fuel pump control,” he messaged back. “I am detecting no other life forms in the area, but am unable to scan through the hull of the ship.”

  What? His sensors were built for tactical combat and intelligence gathering. They should be able to detect almost everything about the vessel. The failure to do so implied some kind of electromagnetic shielding or stealth materials built into the hull, and it was illegal for civilian craft to have that. She adjusted her helmet and glanced up at the ship a second time. Scans aside, what do you make of her?

  “It is definitely a unique design, and now that I am closer, I can tell it is exceptionally well made. The
re are certain stylistic accents, like the placement of the hydraulics in the landing gear, that imply a familiar pattern, however, without access to my full databases I cannot identify their origin.”

  Okay, she sent back. Iapetus was doing his best, and she really couldn’t expect more from the AI as it was a reduced version of the one that ran her ship, but it was still frustrating.

  I’m going in. Cover me and follow me up.

  “Acknowledged, Lieutenant.”

  Meia drew her growler and swung herself up onto the platform with her right hand. Sprinting from the pad’s lip to the base of the ramp, she headed straight inside with the barrel of her gun leading the way. She didn’t get far before finding herself in a cube-shaped airlock with the House Mitsugawa symbol emblazoned on the floor grate. It drew her up short faster than the sealed iris-style door in front of her. Its presence reinforced her earlier hypotheses that either the pirate crew stole the ship from the Shiragawa Zaibatsu, or were working for House Mitsugawa. If it was the former there would be bounty hunters looking for them and this ship in addition to the CSA. If the case was the latter, then she would be stealing from a powerful baron, and her odds of putting Solus and the rest of those criminal bastards on a penal colony for the rest of their lives would be slim to none. Still, she reasoned, either scenario is better than staying here for the rest of my life.

  Resigned, she holstered her weapon and moved up to the inner airlock door. Iapetus’ footsteps clanged up the ramp and stopped beside her. She gestured at the doorsill.

  Technological security in the Confederation operated on an access principal. Systems were programmed only to respond to certain authorized implants, and all controls were remote projections into the operator’s mind. As such, unauthorized persons would see only smooth paneling on a star ship. In principal this kept things secure, but Meia was trained by both the Star Corps and her father. She lived and breathed starship technology since before she could walk, and that meant she knew how to get around pesky things like authorized-access-only networks. Machine-code was Iapetus’ native tongue, so the crew of this ship really didn’t stand a chance against them.

  It took only seconds for him to trigger the airlock cycle and start the antiseptic spray of nanomachines from the ‘lock’s nozzles. Although an alert would be ringing on the bridge as the inner airlock door dilated open, she hoped the fact that they cycled the airlock instead of forcing it would make whoever was on board think they were someone from the away-party returning with a malfunctioning implant. Considering how lax they were about security, she figured it to be the most likely conclusion the crew would reach. If they moved fast enough, they could take control of the ship in short order.

  She drew her ‘90 and charged forward down the narrow, hexagonal corridor the moment the ‘lock finished cycling. Her feet pounded the deck, but it was more important to reach the bridge before the rest of the crew responded to the airlock alert than to try and get there undetected. She grabbed the first ladder she came to with one hand and jumped half-way up it before her feet hit the rungs. Behind her the sound of Iapetus’ clanging steps followed. The second deck looked much like the first, a narrow, hexagonal corridor with doors on either side, and a ladder before the cul de sac at the end. She paused only long enough to determine the crew hadn’t reacted to her yet and ran forward. She got up three more decks with only one wrong guess about which way the next ladder was. When she put her hand on the fourth she stopped herself and pursed her lips.

  They should be on us by now, she transmitted to Iapetus while panting through her nose.

  “I register zero vibration signatures against the background of the ship’s engine,” he sent back.

  Was it possible the ship was empty? If so the crew was more careless than she thought. Shiragawa was not known to hire fools, and that indicated she was dealing with pirates who stole the vessel. Maybe she could take it off their hands and return it to the Shiragawa Zaibatsu? It might give her a way out of getting arrested and make her story about Captain Solus more credible. It was a long shot, but whether or not she returned this ship or ditched it later could be decided after she got off Calemni and put it parsecs behind her.

  Moving as quietly as she could manage, Meia climbed up the ladder with her gun at the ready. At the top she emerged into a short corridor before a heavy-looking door that she reasoned must be the bridge. She signaled Iapetus to launch a cyber-attack on the controls and moved up, ready to fire.

  What’s taking so long? she transmitted after enough time passed that her arms started to shake.

  “The encryption is much more complex than I was expecting. It uses a different algorithm than the rest of the ship.”

  She frowned, but waited several more minutes before dropping her gun arm to give it a rest. She was so close to getting off this accursed moon forever; she could taste it. She just needed a little more patience. With luck, Iapetus would get through the code-encryption before any of the crew returned to the ship and trapped them in the cul-de-sac.

  “Success,” he announced when the mechanism hissed and the door dilated open.

  Meia swung her gun arm up in the direction of an egg-shaped chair positioned between the port and starboard control panels. All the other seats on the small bridge were empty. Tapered and rounded, the room looked like a squashed cone with the wide-end facing forward. The orange-white light of Calemni IIb’s sky streamed through small, triangular windows on either side of a large holographic projector protruding from the ceiling. It was an odd design, and again she had to wonder at how it was a group of pirates managed to take such a new-looking craft from the Mitsugawa barony.

  After waiting a moment longer, she sighed at the pirates’ stupidity and holstered her weapon. She started forward across the threshold, but froze, listening. There was a noise coming from the odd-looking chair. It was something of a sigh and a moan mixed together, and it sent a chill down her spine. She snatched her growler from its holster and signaled Iapetus to circle around the bridge to the left while she went to the right with quiet steps. Keeping her eyes on the edge of the chair’s pointed dome, she moved until its occupant came into view.

  She blinked, not quite believing what she saw.

  The being in the chair was curled up like a chick in an egg. She hugged her knees so that they nearly touched her shoulders, and had her chin resting between them with her eyes closed. Although she appeared female to Meia, she wasn’t quite sure of her species. Long ears extended up from her temples, and she had the hand-like feet of a Relaen, but her skin was far darker than any Relaen’s she had ever seen. There was some kind of animated tattoo dancing in the “V” of the female’s open e-suit. Adding to the woman’s bizarre appearance were high, pronounced cheekbones, narrow eyes, and a long, muscular-looking tail extending from the base of her spine to lay on the deck in a lazy s-curve.

  She blinked, staring at the woman for several moments before holstering her gun again. She put her hands on either side of the opening in the chair and shook it a couple of times, then poked the woman in the cheek with a finger.

  “Stand down and drop the stealth,” she said. Iapetus appeared a meter away.

  “Are we going to restrain her?” The turrets on his shoulders swiveled to their resting position.

  “Not yet. There’s something wrong with her. The alarms we must have tripped coming in should have woken her up even if she was in some kind of somarill. She’s still breathing, but I think something’s been done to her. Are you still in the system?”

  “Yes,” he responded.

  “Close the bridge off and seal the ship, then find out what’s going on with her.” Meia leaned her head into the egg-like chair and examined the woman’s e-suit. It bore the mark of House Mitsugawa on its shoulders like the others but was otherwise unremarkable.

  The bridge door irised shut, and the distant hiss of hydraulics told her the landing ramp was now closed tight as well.

  “This individual is stuck in a somarill, as you hyp
othesized. Her UI is disabled. Shall I intervene?” Iapetus asked.

  She frowned. Getting this female out of the somarill would allow them to question her and get some answers about this ship and her crew, but it would create some issues. They’d have a prisoner to watch in the best case scenario, and waking her up might prove to be a mistake down the line. However, getting into a ship’s navigation system was a lot harder than breaking the locks on its doors, and this woman could spare them the trouble if they could force her to give them access. There was also the remote possibility that she legitimately worked for the Shiragawa Zaibatsu, especially considering Meia doubted the woman put herself into a somarill prison by accident. Perhaps something could be worked out.

  “Get her out of it, but be careful. I think the Praetor did this to her.” She looked at the glowing green dots within Iapetus’ skull.

  “I have already taken multiple precautions against counter-intrusion from our last encounter with Praetor Modulus.”

  She nodded, but felt her shoulders tense. It was frustrating that she couldn’t help him now. She didn’t know much of cyber-warfare outside of what Star Corps taught her in basic training, but she knew enough to stand back and wait when AI’s battled. He was as still as a stone. The only indication that anything was going on was the occasional flicker that passed like a wave through his many sensor dots. With a sigh she sat down in one of the padded chairs by the bridge’s lateral control panels and worried the inside of her cheek with her teeth.

  The woman in the egg-chair gasped. The noise was so sudden it startled Meia, and she almost fell out of her seat. She was on her feet a moment later with her hand on her growler. A shudder passed down from the female’s ears to the end of her tail where the appendage split into three, thick finger-like projections. The woman gasped again and her eyes flew open.

  “Stay calm.” Meia held her palm up in the woman’s direction.