Chapter 6: Stowaway

For as long as the conduit could remember, the voice had been there – wrapped around her mind, cool and electric. Like a whisper, it guided her, told her what to do next. Some of the things she had done. She often tried to forget them. That colony on Rebo-Sax, wiped out by her hands. She spliced into the power grid and shut them down. Without their coolant systems, the entire city burned in the sunrise. She did it without a thought, without a waver. But things were different now. She thought about those people burning in the streets, and without the voice, something different came over her. It was as if the brick foundation in her body was crumbling. She felt weak and disoriented.

The conduit rolled over on her side and wretched. When she opened her eyes, she remembered where she was. Cold steel walls. A gentle hum from the worm drives. The overhead airflow and replicated gravity. She had stowed away on this ship. They had come for her – the Slavos. After wiping her mouth, she looked around and ran her pale hands down the walls. There had to be a hatch somewhere. Her hand stopped on the edge of something when it happened again. Her body tightened and she wretched again, splattering fleshy splinters of lizard meat all over the wall.

Her head felt woozy and as she swayed on her feet, her mind flashed – colony ships marked for Torna, a young girl sitting in terra gardens with her parents, her small fingers picking woodberries, her hands tunneling in the loose, rusty soil, siren flowers bursting golden in a breeze.

“Vaga,” called a soothing motherly voice. “Vaga Bodano? There you are…”

Her body jerked and wretched again, but the visions stopped. But she wanted them back. Her mother. Her name. She has a name – Vaga Bodano. She didn’t know what was happening to her, but she did know she didn’t want to wretch again, the smell grew acrid in her nose.

Feeling the walls again, she found the rough edge of a hatch in the low ceiling. She pulled the hatch door down and climbed up into a tangle of piping and wiring. There wasn’t much room. Spliceways were common in older ships. The infrastructure of the ship was designed for numerous crawl spaces for mechanics and repair droids. As she pulled her thin body through the tight space, she felt wires tracing her back and coolant hoses running down her legs.

Vaga crawled inch by inch almost the entire length of the ship, when she arrived at a maintenance interface.

“It’s about time,” she said to herself. Then she moved a hand to the glittering console. The micro fibers sprawled from her fingertips and wove themselves into the circuit. As she interfaced with the ship, she realized it was becoming harder to get to what she wanted. She pressed her mind harder, forcing the bioelectricity from her cells into her implants and into the ship’s mainframe.

Finally her head shuddered and her retinas lit up in white light. Vaga had broken through. The cortex of the ship’s mainframe sprawled out before her eyes. Swiftly she accessed the navigational logs and read the coordinates.

“Draedus,” she said. “I don’t know what’s there, but anywhere away from the Slavos will be fine with me.” The lights of the mainframe swelled in Vaga’s eyes as she ran through file after file. Then something caught her eye.

“Hyper-encryption,” she said. She tried to break the encryption. Nothing happened. She concentrated and tried again. Nothing. Cinching her eyes and pushing hard with her mind, she tried again. Finally the file slowly opened. It was long list of time stamps. Vaga shook her head and scanned through the list, coming to a random one in the middle.

SOLAR RESIDENTIAL COMPLAEX – GSAD 536.127.94:17

She accessed the file and an action feed began to play. First a darkened room. Then with a slight ping the lights came on, revealing a very well furnished living complex. Stately, the home had exotic plants resting on corner pedestals, a wycan burning fireplace, and even a few Calento art piece flickered on the walls. But what seemed odd to Vaga were the many glass cases hung on the walls. Each case contained various strange shards of metal, rock, and ancient paper.

The front door opened and a thin boy with dark hair entered the home. He immediately dropped a bag on a nearby chair and walked off screen. The action feed swapped to a different room and showed the young man entering a kitchen. He opened the refrigerator and stared at the food inside. Then he slammed the door and turned to a large fruit bowl on a counter. Carefully he picked through a few ashplums and sun pickles until he found a small lur melon and broke it open with his hands.

Eating the melon, he walked out of the kitchen and past the front door again. When he passed the door, it dinged and an older man entered, carrying a cylindrical metal container and a gift box. He looked hurried and worried. The young man passed him without looking at him.

“Palo,” said the old man. “Please. I know I haven’t been there that much. But you must realize what I am on to. If my theories are correct, this is big. Bigger than either of us.” The old man fumbled with his packages and dropped the gift box. He scrambled to pick it up and followed the young man.

The action feed split into two views to follow both Palo and the old man. Palo entered his room, eating the last clumps of his melon. He picked up a small remote on his desk and clicked it. A screen on his wall lit up in a vibrant color display and loud music erupted from the room. Palo flopped onto his bunk and stared at the ceiling.

In the other view, the old man entered a large laboratory. On the far wall was a white mantasteel door. It was large and affixed with a large korlock. As the old man entered the room, he spoke louder, trying to make sure the boy could still hear him. “I think I found a piece of it, Palo,” he yelled. “It’s magnificent.” The old man walked to the large door. There was a thin slot in the korlock. The old man set down his packages and inserted his right hand into the slot. A green light came on briefly followed by a snap. The old man winced in pain and removed his hand.

“Telo Solar,” said the vault door. “Proceed.”

Telo walked into the vault with the metal container and disappeared from view. Inside, there were clanks and whoosh as he secured the metal container. Then he walked out and back into view.

“I mean everything I have been working for,” he yelled. “I might finally be able to prove that those myths are true. I mean can you imagine?” He closed the vault door and the green light on the door lit up and the door said, “Secured.”

Telo grabbed the gift box and walked out of the laboratory and towards Palo’s room. “I don’t wish that you fully understand,” he said, arriving at the entryway to Palo’s room. The music was loud and Palo turned in his bunk to face away from Telo.

“I only ask that someday,” Telo said. “Some day, you give me a chance. I think you will look at what I do or what I have done and believe me. Trust me when I say that this could possibly change the way people think in this galaxy. I mean if this is true, imagine what this means.”

“Whatever,” Palo said. He grabbed the small remote and clicked it numerous times. The music blared and overwhelmed Telo. Telo shook his head and held the gift box in his hands. Then he placed it on Palo’s desk and backed out of the room.

“I just thought,” said Telo. “I’d get you something special.” Telo paused awkwardly as Palo ignored him. He sighed, turned and left the entryway. The music and the bright lights on the wall overtook the entire moment.

As the action feed played, Vaga felt that crumbling feeling in her head and her body. Palo seemed so sad and alone. Yet his father was there, trying to make amends. She watched again as Palo got up from his bunk and walked over to the gift. He opened the cover and looked at it, but from the angle of the recorder, Vaga couldn’t see what it was. Though she figured it wasn’t something too good, since Palo put the cover back on the gift box and tossed it angrily into an open drawer in his antique dresser.

Palo twirled to his remote, clicked it and left the room. As he entered the living room, Telo sat up from a chair and approached him. “I wish you would hear me out,” Telo said.

Palo turned to Telo and said, “Hear you out? You must think I’m –.”

The action feed suddenly stopped and the file structure faded away to black. Vaga shook her head and felt her connection with the mainframe slipping. Frantically, she winced her eyes and tried to recover the files, but they disappeared.

“You are quite strong,” said the Jade Tendril’s cool, smooth female voice. “I’ve been trying to isolate your location since you spliced in.”

Vaga pulled back her hand from the interface – her thin micro fibers receded back into her fingertips and she said, “I only needed to get away from them. You can leave me on Draedus. I can find transport out of there.”

“I’ll leave that decision up to the Captain,” Jade said. “Until, then, I advise you to stay put until the Captain can detain you.”

“You know what I am,” said Vaga. “You know what I can do.”

“I’ve beed upgraded with many illegal patches,” said Jade. “Patches designed to stop conduits.”

Vaga smiled and said, “You know there isn’t a patch through the entire GSA I can’t get through. There was a reason behind our extermination.”

“Surely,” said Jade as loud footsteps clamored above Vaga.

Vaga immediately began pulling herself through the spliceway. She didn’t know where she could go. They would eventually find her. The Captain, if he was anything like the Slavo captains she knew, would know every nuance of his ship and she would be caught. She stopped crawling briefly as her shoulder snagged a jagged piece of metal. Blood slowly slid down her back.

She continued on, passing numerous interfaces. There had to be an interface farther away, more secluded. But it was a risk. Even though she could get into the systems, Jade would see her fingerprint and triangulate her location within the ship. As she shimmied down the tight space, she looked behind her, blood streaking on everything.

Pausing briefly, she heard the footsteps of the captain pang right over her. Through the thin slits in the floor grates she could see ancient leather boots and a green sash waving in his wake. After he had passed her, she continued. The wound on her shoulder was healing. It always tickled when the nanomeds in her blood were at work. It would only be moments before the scratch would be healed.

“We’ll find you eventually,” said Jade. “It serves no purpose prolonging the inevitable.”

Vaga opened her mouth, but then closed it. They wanted her to speak. Jade was trying to goad her into revealing her location. There had to be something. Some way to get out of this. The captain’s footsteps were returning. This time they were slower, more meaningful. Vaga wiggled into a spliceway against a wall. She moved as quietly and slowly as possible. There were pipes and grates in front of her. And in the spaces between them, she saw an interface across the catwalk from her. There was one thing she could do.

That’s when she felt a blade slice into her shoulder. When she took her eye off the interface across the catwalk, she saw him and more importantly, the blade of some golden, crude weapon sticking out of her. The captain looked tired. His face was dirty and weary. He wore an old brown leather longcoat, a linen shirt, even older leather boots and a long green sash tied off around his head and trailing down his back.

Vaga said, “You look ridiculous.”

“And you appear to be quite gifted,” he said. “But I am really tired and I don’t have time for this.” With one hand holding his cutlass in place, the captain drew an old pistol out of his holster and aimed it at Vaga’s head. “Know what this is? It’s a Colt 45. It’s the rarest of artifacts from a long lost world. Crude device really. Uses metal rounds. Creates the nastiest of deaths. Skulls blown open and the whole bit. I have only found twelve rounds for this weapon across the GSA. I have seven left…or six after this. I save them for my better kills.” The captain looked at Vaga’s face hidden behind the piping. A trickle of blood dripped from her nostril.

“I don’t…don’t think you can afford that, captain,” she stammered.

The captain cocked his head and said, “And why would that be?”

“Because at the moment,” Vaga said. “I’m raiding your mainframe.”

The captain looked behind him and saw her microfibers crawling all over the interface behind him. They had flowed underneath the floor grating, right underneath his feet and into the Jade Tendril. He looked back at her, his face twisted with anger and a bit of sadness. Vaga saw the faintest glimmer in his eyes that pleaded with her to stop.

“Don’t worry. I’m leaving all her personality patches,” Vaga said. “I figured you made some custom modifications to her profile. I’m only taking the data you have hyper-encrypted.”

The captain pulled the hammer back on the ancient pistol and said, “Withdraw now, or the last thing that goes through that mechmind of yours will be this lead.”

Vaga was bleeding from both her nostrils now. She had never tried this big of a raid. “You – you can’t kill me,” she said again. “Everything that is precious to you-you is in me now. I’ve de-deleted the files. I’m the only thing you have now.”

The captain stared at her. There was a darkness in his eyes Vaga had never seen before, even in the Slavos. Was this the right choice, crossing a renegade like this? Blood streamed from her chin and onto her gray jumpsuit. Her whole body shook. Suddenly, the captain removed the cutlass from her shoulder and holstered his pistol. He held out his hand to her and said, “You cross me again, your neck will meet my blade.”

Vaga retracted her fibers and reached out to the captain’s hand and took it. He roughly pulled her out of the spliceway. Some piping came loose and fell on Vaga’s head with a clang.

Vaga rubbed her head with one hand and said, “I just don’t want to go back to the Slavos. I’ll do anything.”

The captain smiled crookedly and said, “I’ll see to that.”