Dangerous Toys (Part Twelve)

Oscar waited until his Engineer had taken a break from the transporters. Instead, she was playing with Loki. She had reduced the gravity slightly in the department and was throwing a ball high in the air. Loki was obviously delighted to discover that he could jump higher than normal and Patrica was taking care to be ready to catch him. It took him a moment to realise that she was training the animal to live in space. Intriguing.

“Engineer, I apologise for the interruption but can I ask you to test the scanners. I am receiving anomalous readings.” Patricia sighed and caught Loki and the ball, glad that her suit could absorb the impact. ‘/Best/StrongestandFastest/MyBall?/Again?’ She laughed and smiled at her dog,’/Later/Working/Soon/.’ She turned the gravity back to normal and sat Loki down with his ball. Back to the world. “Yes Oscar, Put them on screen and give me a look.”

It took her a moment to work out what she was seeing. A vague ball of reflections arriving in her direction. No transponders, no anything really. It was too far away to tell what it was but it smelled off. The other shoe was about to drop. “Oscar, begin the evasion manoeuvres we discussed and ramp up our speed. I’ll call the Captain. Oh, and keep running scans passive only. Keep the ship dark.” She thought for a moment, “I want you to launch the decoy transponder. If they are looking for us they will follow it and if it’s nothing they will ignore it.”

She hit Comms, “Captain, we may have company arriving. I’ve instructed Oscar as we discussed but you may need to prepare the crew. I’ll be straight up to the bridge as soon as I’m finished here.” /Longnose/ sighed quietly. This was not a warship and many of his crew were already stressed by recent events. Now his human thought they were being hunted. What little the other Captains had been willing to say, they all told him to listen when his human was worried. “If a human turns its head to the wind and sniffs be ready. They can’t or won’t explain it but they have good instincts for trouble. Probably because they cause so much of it.” He went to his quarters to prepare the orders and, if he was being honest, have /Scentofhappy/ sit on his lap for a little while.

Oscar and the Engineer had prepared a more complex plan than the Captain knew. She had blandly explained that she would take ‘measures’ without doing more than outline the basics. They were nearly certain that Comms were secure. Nearly. He began the new protocols by preparing three launches and timing it to the microsecond he fired them. One sent a blast of electronic fog into the dark, enough to dampen any watching sensors. His Engineer had loaded the blast with every bit of malware she could drag from the database. The next carried a cloned transponder that began matching every emission that he could measure from the Dangerous Toys.

Once upon a time, a bored human had designed a weapon. It wasn’t meant to be a weapon, it was meant to be a joke. He sent a ‘flare’ to a rival Ship, a firework in space that was a medley of all the insults he could think of combined with some very rude and explicit deep-fakes of his rival engineer behaving inappropriately with a Xeno, a Xeno people known for their tentacles. Within a moment his flare had played their sensors like the finest instrument and everything from the exterior temperature sensors to the crew’s wi-fi was happily painting the ship with the payload. Hidden under the code for upgrades, super-nova, porn and anything else his content was displayed throughout the rival Ship. Before it got to the actual court-martial the Engineer was transferred to somewhere quiet and promoted. He was provided with access to Humanities database of Xeno ships and put to work. Oscar had admired the man’s legacy even as Patrica had loaded it into the missile.

The final launch was aimed at the closest human orbital. It was completely dark to the universe and would stay silent until a Human AI was in range, however long that took. It contained a copy of every record of the ship and their plans. Patrica called it a ‘Testament’ if they were lost. Despite his objections, it also carried a full copy of his code. Patrica had insisted that if it came to it, he should survive.

The moment the missiles were out of his launchers he cut the power to eighty-per cent of the ship. He pulled the ship-fields as tightly close as possible and let the explosion of power run through the engines, accelerating them in a way that would surprise anyone familiar with the ship. Then he cut them completely, letting the ship sail in silence through the dark. He estimated that running at this speed was safe for a couple of hours before they needed to manoeuvre again. If the enemy took the bait.

In a dim room deep beneath his official residence, a particular captain was activating the sort of equipment that few militaries have, let alone a single captain. Incice had assembled this bunker after a careful review of what usually happened to anyone that acted as the ‘power-behind-the-throne’ without keeping their knives sharp. Here he could track everyone and everything he owned and, more importantly, the ones he didn’t own. Yet. His little fleet was close to the kill, the Dangerous Toys oblivious to the incoming storm. Despite losing contact with his operatives he still had some hope that they were fighting. He watched as...something exploded in space. The blast-wave sounded like a screech across his brain, a physical pain. He shook it off and watched intently. He missed the more important event as his system flickered and began silently dying as malevolent human software began to infect his software.

The Recovery Initiative Fleet was almost in striking range of their target when they were hit by the blast. Mostly unaware that Incice had access to every sensor or Comm they didn’t have the chance to dampen the result. Their ships drowned in a haze of signals designed to blind them. The Commander shouted, threatened and harassed his men to get the systems back. “Find that damn ship and find out what the hell that was! Did it explode?” Finally, the blast-wave passed them by, leaving the crew time to reboot the scanners. His second officer arrived to report, “Sir that was some kind of munition. I assume the human put it together because I have read the manifest and that ship was not carrying anything like it.” He sounded pissed that the human was ruining his day by not just dying quietly. If he had thought about it that should have given him second thoughts about the attack. “We have found the damned ship. It changed course and picked up speed following the explosion. It’s making good time and it obviously knows we’re out here. Obviously, they thought they could hide from us.” He didn’t think it was worth explaining how close they had come to losing it. Only luck had found the signal heading away. The Commander had a pretty clear idea of what had happened and who was actually listening. “This is as good a time as any to separate the ‘Pirates’. Send them out and we will stay here and tidy up the damage. I want a full diagnostic of whatever happened here. Dismissed.”

A little more carefully, once it had recognised the military-grade installations, the human code went to work on the Pirate Fleet. Its first act had been to pick out the dummy signal and make sure the enemy followed it. Once the ships had taken the bait it went back to work on the weapons systems.

Patrica was glad to take a moment in the Captain’s quarters and let the two dogs play. Although Oscar had left the bridge untouched it felt dimmer and colder. The Captain smiled, “It’s the silence. Most of the systems are off and I sent the crew to rest. It makes the place feel lonely.” He was still concerned about his Engineer, finding it difficult to reconcile her actions and her manner. She had killed. She had terrified the enemy into surrender and yet here she sat throwing a ball to the dogs. He remembered the mistake he had made with Wippene and cast off his memories, taking a deep inhale of the room, looking for the truth. The clear smell from the dogs was a pleasure, simple thoughts /Playing/Happy/Treats/Again? But the strange brew from his Engineer took more thought.../Playing/amusement/.../fear/regret/PackLoyalty/determination/bloodprice/

He shook his head, “Forgive me Patrica but I must ask you a question. One of your emotions, a scent is translated as “blood-price”. I get the sense of something but...it is not something I understand. Please?” Patrica didn’t look at him, just continued to throw the ball to Loki. “Captain, I took lives. We took lives. They were trying to kill us and steal from us but such things have a price. For vengeance, for justice or a million other reasons, mankind carries an expectation that there will be consequences. That is as close to an explanation as I can give you.” She turned to him, her face with the same hint of stone that she had worn when she had threatened the insurgents, “Captain, I think someone is coming for us because if it were our people dead and captured I would be coming for them.”