It was time to drop the bombshell. “Maraschino have sent me to speak with you.”
“Who?”
“Maraschino, data broker and hacktivist group extraordinaire, and employers of the galaxy’s most captivating hacker, yours truly.”
“Right . . .”
“Not one for dramatic introductions I see, very well, I will get to the point,” Penelope said. “You need information, and so do we. I’m here to make you a splendid offer, Doctor Pierce. We can provide you everything we know about Eupiar and her mother Pernoy.”
“What makes you think I want that?”
“Oh, please, don’t be a cheeky bastard and insult my hard work,” she said. “I know exactly what you were searching on that unsecured connection to the internet. It’s not every day a man with suspected links to the HLF searches for two Hashmedai, who also had links to that group.”
“I’m not a terrorist.”
“Travis, we know everything about you,” she said. “Well rather EISS did, since they’ve been keeping a close eye on you since the 2030s. We merely borrowed the data.”
“If you know so much, how could I possibly help you?”
“We may be the best out there with heavily modded HNIs that keep us mostly off the grid, but there are some limitations to what we can do,” she said. “There are times when our HNIs can be compromised and tracked; making it next to impossible to hack devices we need to be in close range of.”
Pierce crossed his arms, resting his back against the fridge. “And I don’t have HNI.”
“You catch on fast! You, love, can enter places we can’t without being detected by HNI scanning.”
“I also can’t hack a computer.”
“That’s okay, it’s just a delivery job I need you to do, nothing more.” She kept her face neutral, cold, and calculating. Smiling was a weakness. “You go in, deliver the package, then leave.”
“I still don’t understand why me, exactly?” Pierce asked. “Most of my crew doesn’t have HNI, why not take them?”
“Your friends can refuse the offers we make to them. You can’t. You care too much about what you thought you left behind in 2033.”
“And what of that man that attacked me? Is he related to all this?”
“He was an EISS operative that caught on fast that I went to make contact with you,” she said. “So, yes, he is. All the more reason why you need to help me—”
Pierce vanished from her vision, upstaged by a window that appeared in front of her, showing live footage of one of the cameras outside. A number of armed men were gathering around, no doubt ready to storm in. It was a pity, as she was close to getting through to Pierce.
Men were like computers you wanted to hack. If you wanted access and for them to do whatever you wanted them to do, you needed to code your way in. Her outfit, looks, information being held before him, that was the coding she needed to gain access to his trust, and put him to work.
And now those buggers downstairs have to interrupt me. Penelope minimized the projection, stood, and looked out the window at the numerous high-rise residential units outside. “Oh, Travis darling, are you up for a quick workout?”
22 Peiun
Rezeki’s Rage, en route to Morutrin Prime
Asteroid belt, Morutrin system
October 15, 2118, 02:51 SST (Sol Standard Time)
Peiun’s towel removed the red juices dripping from his lips. His meal was splendid, and his taste buds and previously roaring belly thanked him for it.
He took a glance at the captain’s quarters he earned the right to use, where he sat at his personal dining table. The servants did an excellent job laying it out to his specifications, rearranging the furniture, and placing handwoven cloths on all tables and chairs, much like how his mother enjoyed decorating the home he grew up in.
The walls were adorned with an assortment of Hashmedai blades, swords, and polearms. The ceremonial short sword the former captain used was displayed in the middle, honoring his sacrifice to the Empire, and reminding Peiun the quarters once belonged to him. There was an aquarium built-in to the wall teeming with life collected from the strip of oceans that existed at Paryo’s equator. Small dim lights within the aquarium gave his personal dinner area a blue hue, almost as if he was sitting within the depths of the oceans having his meal. It also made Careiah’s skin look that much more seductive when she went to clean up his plates now full of bones from his meal.
“Has your meal been satisfactory?” Careiah asked him.
“It has, thank you.”
The three servants, who had been busy cleaning his oversized bathing chambers and making his bed, exited; Peiun and Careiah were alone. He stood and faced the largest observation window in his quarters. Asteroids floated past the Rezeki’s Rage with the blackness of space barely visible at times.
Careiah’s reflection appeared next him on the window’s thick glass surface, joining him in his endless gaze out. “We have not cleared the belt yet,” she said. “May I ask why?”
“It’s the only way for us to keep the pirates at bay with the MRF active.”
“Have we been assigned pirate suppression duties now?”
“No, this is all related to our mission,” he said. “The mission the empress has bestowed upon me.”
“Being the mission the former captain was given.”
“We need to identify the occupants of the transport we found in the Sirius system and bring them back to the Empire.”
“And you believe those people were Hashmedai living out here?”
“That’s what I suspect,” Peiun said, looking away from the sight of the belt and onto her eyes, radiating with red bioluminescent light, much like his. “Why the empress cares so much about those that ran away from the Empire is a question I cannot answer. Hashmedai like that are either ignored or dealt with by the Assassin’s Guild.”
“And for the pirates?” she asked.
“They attacked the mercenary base where I suspect our missing Hashmedai may have spent time,” he said. “I’m still trying to figure out how they fit into this, if they do at all, and why was Maraschino there. We suspect the dead Aryile we found was one of their members.”
Careiah gave him a puzzled look. “Maraschino hackers are involved . . .”
He nodded. “It would seem so.”
“I recall reading a state news report about Maraschino. They leaked the location of our facilities that were developing MRF technology to EISS.”
“That’s how they operate,” he said. “Hack our secrets, then sell them to the humans or Radiance, only to do the same to them, and sell it to us.”
“Souyila also had data leaked about its operations, correct?”
“Indeed, Maraschino recruits from all species across the galaxy,” he said. “It’s how they’ve become so effective, they have people in every nation, colony, space station, and starship.”
“A dead Maraschino agent would mean those mercenaries had valuable information,” Careiah said, then paused to consider her next words. “Or were hired to work with a third party.”
Peiun’s mouth formed into a charming grin impressed that Careiah’s line of thinking was on the same level as his in terms of his investigation. “I may have encountered one of their agents on Amicitia Station. I have reasons to believe she hacked my HNI somehow.”
“Military HNI are invulnerable to hacks, I thought?”
“So did I . . .” he said, followed by a depressing grunt. “One thing is for certain, whoever it is the empress wants us to recover; Maraschino wants to know as well. And if they want to know, they probably want to sell it to someone outside of the Empire—”
Their talk was distracting. Careiah managed to hold on his waist as they stood before the window peering out into space and the asteroid belt.
She pulled away from him as quickly as he noticed. “I’m sorry,” Careiah said. “You were tense. It’s in my nature and training.”
“I know.”
She s
miled, inching her way closer into his personal space. “I can help you.”
Peiun’s HNI incoming message notification flashed. He took the call and a small holographic screen of Alesyna appeared over his eyes. “Captain,” Alesyna transmitted.
“Yes, what is it?”
“The human we captured has made progress with the QEC,” Alesyna said.
“Excellent, I will be right there.”
The call came to an end, prompting Peiun to make his exit, leaving Careiah and her wincing glare behind as he vanished into the corridors. His journey back to the bridge made him wonder if he was doing the right thing to his body. His excuse for not accepting the lust she kindly offered before was that he was unworthy as he was the acting captain.
But that all changed. He was the captain now and, as such, was expected to make the ship, their mission, and service to the great Imperial navy his life, while remaining stuck in the body of young adult male. A body that begged him day and night to seek out a female as it gushed out sexual pheromones everywhere he went.
The solution to his predicament was a simple one, let Careiah do her job as the captain’s personal servant. Only, he still didn’t feel like he was the captain. Peiun never moved up the ranks, served as a bridge officer, then a first officer. He was made captain because of the death and destruction brought on from the surprise attacks of the Draconians, and then given full power as a captain, because the empress demanded it.
As far as Peiun was concerned, he wasn’t the captain or an acting captain. He was a fake captain, one that was pretty good at it. Fake captains don’t deserve to bed such beautiful servant girls like Careiah. Doing so would bring shame and dishonor to his name, and the high status his mother earned during the Celestial Order wars. So he told himself.
When the elevators delivered Peiun to the bridge, he marched over to the communication station. Moe had finished installing the newly acquired QEC device, shivering from the cold in the process like most humans would.
“I got it working, I think,” Moe said to him as he approached.
He grimaced. “You think?”
“It’s transmitting to the other QEC it’s linked with,” Moe said. “But according to its logs, that QEC is right here on the ship. The QEC is basically talking to itself according to that, yet the test messages I sent aren’t replaying from it.”
Peiun smirked. Moe had just proven his theory. “That’s because it’s not.”
Moe’s arms crossed, and his eyebrows rose. “Explain.”
“Come with me,” Peiun asked of him while leaving the bridge.
The two moved to the exit the bridge. Alesyna followed behind.
He allowed it for now, even though he asked Moe to come with him, not her. Alesyna’s body language remained unchanged during their trek through the interior of the frigate, its darkened halls leading into its docking bay. He continued to observe her, waiting for her to do something that might unveil why she was really a member of his crew. He sensed it was coming soon.
At the far end of the docking bay was the old and elementally withered transport found in the Sirius system. The same one the former captain had been searching for, the same one that was restored by members of Foster’s crew. Inside the transport, Peiun pulled open a wall panel, showing Moe the QEC inside. Moe examined it with his tools, pulling up its communication logs, and the numerous test messages he sent with the QEC recently installed on the bridge.
Moe took a step back, gasping; a wave of mist left his lips. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said. “Okay, so, I was wrong. The QEC is working fine; it was just linked with the QEC here the whole time . . .”
“Are you able to bring up past messages sent from its logs?” Peiun asked.
Moe browsed through the holographic screen for several minutes before giving his reply. “Nope, I guess unplugging it must have wiped it all out.”
“That’s fine, this confirms that those that took this transport to Sirius, were part of the crew of the Fortune Runner,” Peiun said. “The empress is searching for a group of mercenaries, Hashmedai ones to be exact, ones that vanished with the Carl Sagan sixty-eight years ago.”
Peiun went to make note of his discoveries with his HNI. Halfway through doing that, a private text message appeared over his eyesight. The sender was Moe.
Can we talk in private, without Alesyna around? The message said.
Peiun typed his reply using the virtual keyboard app in his HNI. Of course, I shall send her away.
Alesyna remained standing, glaring at the QEC with slightly frustrated looks as her eyes opened. She had put herself in a trance, and something told him it wasn’t an ESP sweep of the sector. More like she was trying to connect her mind with the complex computer systems within the QEC, only to be denied. QEC were human tech, mind shields would have prevented unauthorized psionics, especially nonhuman ones, from gaining access to it.
“Thank you for your work, human,” Peiun said to Moe. “I shall escort you back to your stay.”
It was a lie of course. Peiun and Moe left the docking bay heading in one direction, Alesyna left in the opposite way, back to the elevators that would take her to the bridge. The two stopped, and swiftly double-checked she was out of visual range. Then waited another five minutes, she was a powerful psionic after all, she didn’t always need eyes to see you.
Alesyna was gone, and the two returned back to the transport and it’s QEC, still exposed by the opened wall panel. They shut and locked the transport’s doors as Peiun crossed his arms, and firmly said to Moe. “Speak.”
“I lied, I can pull the most recent messages from its logs,” Moe said. “But they only go back to a few months ago since one of the QECs was offline for a long time. I’m guessing it was this one right here.”
“You are correct, this transport and its QEC had been buried in a desert for decades,” Peiun said. “What do the logs say?”
Moe waved his hands around the QEC, his HNI did the rest.
An audio-only recording replayed, the speaker spoke in English.
“Talon team one, this is the Fortune Runner, can you hear us?” The recording continued, “If anyone can hear this message, please respond, you’ve been offline for years. We thought we lost you, but apparently not. Well, to whoever receives this message, be advised that I have informed Alesyna, you are transmitting again. I’m sorry for doing this, but I have no choice, things . . . have changed since you’ve been gone. She’ll be informing the empress about this, and she’ll likely be dispatching a ship to recover you based on the coordinates we’re receiving. If you aren’t the original operators of the transport, consider this your final warning and leave at once.”
The recording ended. Peiun’s composure altered slightly after processing what he heard.
“That’s everything,” Moe said. “Understand why I didn’t want her around?”
“Alesyna doesn’t speak English or any other human languages.” Well to my knowledge. “But, yes, I understand.”
He also now understood how the empress knew of the location of the transport. When Foster’s crew recovered and powered the transport on, its QEC began to transmit and established a multi-decade delayed handshake communication with the Fortune Runner. Said member of the Fortune Runner informed Alesyna, most likely via telepathy, who in turn told the empress, behind his back.
Why are she and the empress keeping secrets from me? Why not tell me everything I need to know? It would make this mission significantly easier to accomplish, Peiun’s frustrated thoughts bellowed. “Did nobody hear these messages when sent?”
“Nope, remember this is human tech forced to work with a Hashmedai transport,” Moe said. “You need to manually interact with the QEC to pick up messages. If nobody was expecting messages, they would have been missed and stored in its memory until then.”
Foster’s crew knows nothing of this then, and therefore the UNE should not as well. The tension in Peiun’s body released slightly. “You’ve done well, human; I shall re
ward you for your assistance to the Empire.”
Moe’s eyes lit up. “Oh, really?”
“What is it you seek?” Peiun offered.
“Uh, Freedom? A ride back to Morutrin Prime, Gravity City if you don’t mind.”
“The human built settlement on the planet?” Peiun said. Moe nodded. “Very well, I will grant you this.”
23 Foster
Atrium Arm, A-OK Fourteen Pub
Amicitia Station 14, Arietis system
October 15, 2118, 02:52 SST (Sol Standard Time)
Rebecca Foster had mentally jotted down a number of witty and sassy comments to bark at Pierce as she entered the pub. Pierce didn’t seem like the type to hang out at bars and clubs, get drunk, and flirt with women. The last time she brought him here he kept to himself and seemed happy when it came time to leave.
The comments she had thought of got tossed out, when she checked every table, and stool at the bar. There were a whole lot of humans and aliens drinking, chatting, dancing to whatever it was that passed as music in this century, but no Pierce. She took a seat at the bar, and got the attention of the bartender, and his pleasant smile.
“Hey, Paul,” she said to him.
Paul approached her, wiping the bar surface down with a damp towel. “Well, well, well, if it isn’t the southern belle that’s gonna save the galaxy.”
Foster’s eyes rolled, turning Paul’s pleasant smile into a laugh. “Gimme a break, I ain’t no prestigious belle.”
“You’re just as hot as well.”
“Shut up.”
“What will it be?”
Foster searched the establishment again for her missing science officer. “Have you seen Doctor Pierce?”
“Yeah like an hour ago, he left with a Hashmedai woman,” Paul said.
“Really?”
“Haven’t seen him since then. What’s up?”
“He’s missing, and at the worst possible time too. Need his brains for something in the morning. Wanted to give him the heads-up about it but couldn’t get hold of him. You know who this gal is?”
Unsanctioned Reprisal Page 20