“Prepare the shuttle, right now!”

Keith was trying to invoke the calm, unyielding voice that had served him throughout his career. Observing the man’s face, he knew he was falling short of his intention. The aftereffects of the nanomachine assault still reverberated through his body. His straight back wanted to slump, and his legs wanted to collapse into a chair. It took an effort of will to project authority.

“Sir… Mr. Garner, there’s really nothing I can do. We’ve closed the airlock and parked the shuttle. The Pegasus has finished the preflight checklist. It’s too late!”

Keith felt the loss of his mindpal as a gaping void. If only he could call on some of his new contacts, he would show this… this bureaucrat. He decided to bet everything on one hand.

“Mr… Garreth.” he began, reading from the nametag on the man’s chest. “You seem to suffer from a miscomprehension. You think that not getting me on that ship is an option that is currently available to you? Let me correct that misunderstanding; it is not.”

The man began to say something, but Keith dropped his voice and added another ounce of authority as he continued. “You have two options. You can either recall that shuttle and get me aboard The Pegasus, or I can cancel the flight altogether.”

Keith called up his mindpal for effect, causing his eyes to fog over. The man would assume Keith was preparing some kind of message, and couldn’t know the threat was empty.

Keith dropped the interface, and his eyes bored into the other man. “Well?” he asked. “What’s it going to be?”

“Oh damn. Let me… hold on.” A moment later, Mr. Garreth said, “Get over to the airlock. The shuttle will be there in three minutes, and it will not wait for you!”

“Thank you, Mr Garreth, “ Keith gave the man a curt nod and looked around the room. The other three agents were still on the floor, with first responders attending to them. Keith knew they were going to wake up with thunderous headaches and the worst hangover of their lives, but their lives weren’t in danger. He was still experiencing intermittent dizziness from his last encounter with Mr Anson more than a month ago. The medicine he had been taking to counteract the effect must have given him partial protection from this attack. Be thankful for small mercies, he thought as he entered the shuttle.

-

Goose steered Nick’s body into the chair and looked around the bridge. These humans… The space vessels built by his people looked nothing like the human vessels. He was used to a ship’s core, protected and filled with enough cells to support a semi-independent network, a communications array to maintain a connection with the central network, and some kind of propulsion. The vessel normally ended up looking like a series of nodes connected with tubes, like a strangely shaped molecule.

The Pegasus, though? Corridors, rooms, screens, chairs, bulkheads…. It was cumbersome, how humans needed to transport their infrastructure and architecture into space. So inefficient. He had suggested to Nick that humans should focus their research on brain imprint storage and simulation. If they could explore space in vessels that simply ran simulations of the crew, it would make it both safer, and increase efficiency by an order of magnitude. The humans seemed oddly reluctant to recognize that their bodies were simply biological constructs designed to transport and maintain their consciousness. This attachment to their biology held them back.

A sudden thought struck Goose: The technology his People used to store imprints of memories and consciousness… Could they replicate humans in the same storage matrix? They would need to find a way to collect the information from the human brain, but… Of course! Was it that simple?

Goose was following his trail of thought, making notes and writing down avenues to explore further, when a message appeared in Nick’s mindpal.

“Report in!”

Goose reported back, “Astrogation ready”, as the other departments made final adjustments and preparations. Normally, his role in the current process would be minimal. The astrogation data crunching had finished yesterday, and Nick had prepared the target data in the ship’s computers.

Of course, nobody knew that Goose was right now making some slight… corrections. Instead of heading off to TOI 700, about a hundred light years away from the Sol system, the ship would end up in what was pretty much empty space. Empty, except for a beam of light pulses that would pass by the location a few hours after they arrived.

Putting his discovery to one side, Goose once again reviewed his plans for how to handle the situation when they arrived at what everyone would think was the wrong location. He looked around the bridge, learning as much as possible about the rest of the crew, their behaviours, and building predictive models for how they would react. The captain was talking to a young woman Goose didn’t recognize. Goose couldn’t hear what they were saying - but he could read their lips. “All departments confirm readiness, Sir.”

“Alright. Let’s get this boat on the water, “ the captain answered. And added to the young woman, “Give me the all hands channel.”

The captain’s words echoed in Nick’s mindpal, and Goose was listening. “All hands, prepare for departure in 60 seconds on my… mark. Acceleration along the main vector, half-gee increasing to two-gee over 10 minutes. Two-gee to be maintained for three hours, then a 15 minute break and systems check. All hands, prepare for acceleration in 30 seconds… now.”

The captain sent a nod to the Pilot Officer, “Slow ahead, Pilot”.

“Affirmative, captain, slow ahead”. Goose saw the Pilot Officer turning a physical switch on his instrument panel and pushing a stick forward. They could operate all functions through mindpal interfaces, but on the bridge, there were physical instruments wherever possible. The visual clues might save valuable seconds in the case of an emergency.

Goose felt a deep rumbling in the vessel before being pushed back into the chair as the acceleration increased. What a strange sensation. Gravity had always been a mathematical concept to Goose, something that held objects in place, not something his people ever considered a personal experience. For the next 10 minutes, acceleration continued to increase, until they were cruising outwards at a steady two gravities. Goose reviewed the next few hours and days, checking and double checking. His success or failure would determine the survival of his people. Of everything he had known before meeting the humans.

Why was it then that he was still so conflicted about Nick and what he had done? He turned inward, listening to the voice still screaming in desperation, before bringing his attention back to his planning.

-

Resigned, Rashi looked around the common hall, not really seeing. She longed for days filled with normal. Sleep, breakfast, work, dinner, sleep, repeat.

“That is… strange.” Sae had said, working on something on her mindpal.

Rashi sighed wordlessly and sat back to wait for Sae to elaborate. The high gravity was oppressing, and her body already felt like it had gone through the wringer today. She was tired and desperate for a few hours of sleep before the start of her shift. She almost smiled; here they were, departing on the grandest adventure of humankind, and she longed for normality and sleep. Perhaps the one aspect of humanity that separates us from other animals - and maybe aliens? Rashi thought. How we can wish for one thing and do another? How we can logically plan in one direction, even as our emotions are screaming at us to take another path? She closed her eyes, just for a moment.

She was drifting off when Sae’s words brought her back. “That is so strange, ” Sae repeated. “Just before we engaged the engines, a small shuttle arrived with a single passenger. I’m trying to access the cameras…”. Rashi could see Sae’s face going almost white. Whispering, Sae said, “Shit! It’s Mr. Garner. He is here, on the ship!”

Rashi sighed, and her tired mind waited for the next wave of fear and panic to hit her system. One, two, three… there! She felt the now familiar jolt as her body’s endocrine system prepared her to run away from a mountain lion or whatever it had been designed to do. She idly wondered how much adrenaline a human body had available for use. How many mountain lions until I just give up?

Fully awake now, Rashi looked up at a still talking Sae. “... for now, he’s stuck down by the airlock. At anything over one gravity of acceleration, that door locks automatically.”

“How does that help us, though? It’s just a matter of time before we slow down and he goes up to the bridge. He’s probably already messaged ahead with the details.” Rashi cast a look over at the marines. “It’s just a matter of time”.

“Maybe, “ Sae said. “But… Let me check something.”

While Sae was working her hacker magic, Rashi continued to watch the marines as surreptitiously as she could. There was something about their presence that clashed with the rest of the room. Not just their uniforms and firearms, but something about their... Presence. All around the room, people were talking in loud voices, notably excited about the adventure, smiling, laughing. The marines were… quiet. And there was a gravity about them, as they calmly looked at the room with faces void of expression or emotion. Like being locked in a cage with a tiger, Rashi thought.

“Aha!” Sae exclaimed. People around them looked up, including one of the marines. Sae must have noticed the same thing, because when she continued, her voice was low. “He seems to have his mindpal offline. I’ve checked the router logs, and have cross checked all the mindpal addresses that are registered. No new mindpals have connected to the network since Garner got on. It’s as if… he doesn’t have an active mindpal.”

Maybe it was the adrenaline. Maybe the repeated exposure to stress finally wore down her brain, but the gentle pressure of intuition that had harassed Rashi’s mind for the past hours suddenly made a breakthrough.

“Oh. OH!”

Sae noticed Rashi’s expression. “What?”

Ignoring Sae, Rashi stared at nothing and put together the pieces. Now that her subconscious had given her the conclusion, assembling the puzzle was straightforward.

The sudden increased security presence. The realisation that the signal wasn’t just their secret, and that some secret group was trying to suppress the information, even going around to delete it. Nick, asking them to extend Goose’s privileges. And now; Nick disappears into a strange room and reappears shortly after. Then he behaves strangely. Nothing overt, but several small things. So small that even as she couldn’t put her finger on them, Rashi’s finely tuned empathy had detected the strangeness.

And the last piece of the puzzle: Keith Garner. Here, on the ship and in pursuit. With no mindpal.

At the centre of it all; Goose. Desperate to fulfil his mission. To rescue his People. A complete stranger, an alien, given access to some of humanity's most potent tools.

“Nick isn’t Nick!”

If Rashi had expected surprise or incredulity, she didn’t get it. Sae simply looked at her with a calm expression and said, “Explain”.

“It all fits. The only explanation is… Goose has hijacked Nick.”

Rashi explained her theory, and Sae was silent for a long while.. Now and then she accessed the mindpal, but mostly she just sat in thought, listening. Eventually, she said,

“I think you are right. And if you are… we need to deal with the situation. Now. Before Garner comes out of that room.”

“But what can we do?”

“We need to free Nick. From Goose. But… Actually, now that I think about it, that is secondary. First, we need to intercept Garner and somehow convince him… to not involve the captain, and the rest of the… crew.”

Casting a look at the black clad marines at the table next to them, Rashi gave a slow nod.

“Yes…. that makes sense. But how?”

“I have an idea…” Sae said and explained.

-

Three hours later, acceleration was cut back to give everyone a break to move around. The Pegasus was making solid headway out of the solar system, heading straight up from the ecliptic to avoid the gravitational effects of planets on the way.

While the rest of the crew stood up to stretch and get something to eat, Rashi and Sae got up and moved quickly towards the main spinal corridor. Except for the common rooms, the ship was quiet, and if anyone noticed them moving determinedly through the vessel, nobody said anything.

With the slight gravity now in effect, they climbed the ladders towards the shuttle bay level. They soon found themselves outside a locked door.

“Ready?” Sae asked.

Rashi gave a brief nod. “Go!”, and Sae sent the door the signal to unlock. With the click; Sae and Rashi rushed inside to find Keith Garner calmly watching them from a chair.

“Ms. Anson. Ms. Pandya. We meet, at last.”

-

Keith had tried the door, but finding it locked, he put two and two together quickly. He chastised himself for not arranging for some emergency device; the lack of a mindpal was a significant disadvantage. The same thing had happened on Titan Terminus, and Keith was normally not in the habit of making the same mistake twice. A mistake that now meant he had no way to contact the captain without getting to the bridge.

For a minute, Keith debated moving up to the door to overpower whoever came through. But if it was Nick, he wouldn’t stay conscious past the first two seconds of the encounter, anyway. And if they kept him locked in here, he would just be standing next to a closed door for… who knows how long? No, better to just stay seated. If he was going to succeed, it would be by using his brain and words.

When the door opened, he saw the two girls entering without Nick. They don’t look surprised. Keith thought. So this must have been their plan all along. Nick must be busy on the bridge, or he would be here too. That also means no Goose, no truth telling abilities…

“Hello, Mr Garner, “ the darker girl replied to his greeting. Rashi. Rashi Pandya, daughter of Iditri and Herik Pandya, sister to Ivaan. It had been a long journey over from Titan, and Keith had spent much of it reading.

The other girl just nodded. Sae Anson, sister to Nick. Orphaned at 13 years old, spent the first years of her life caring for and providing for her brother. Computer prodigy, hacker extraordinaire.

As they entered, the door closed and locked behind them.

“We need your help, “ Rashi said.

That took Keith by surprise. “Help?” He turned to face Rashi, focusing on her. “Help with what? I think you are severely misunderstanding the situation. There is really only one way this will go. I will put you two and your friend under arrest. Voluntarily or not.”.

Rashi was about to respond, but Keith interrupted her. “You have just made a big mistake. You are isolated, trapped in a spaceship. There is really nowhere for you to escape to.”

“You should listen to her.” A soft voice, almost too low to hear. Sae was standing in the far corner of the room.

Keith paused and looked at Sae, as Rashi said, “Nick has been… hijacked. It’s not Nick. It’s the alien.” Keith was about to ask why that was his problem, when something in the girl’s voice made him hesitate.

“So it’s finally happened. You brought this on yourselves. On all of us. My job is to put a stop to this while it is still possible.”

“Nothing you can do, Mr Garner. Nobody can stop this… except for us, “ Sae said, still so very softly.

Keith looked at the two girls carefully, realising he needed more information. “Explain”.

“Nick doesn’t know this. And the alien… Goose. He doesn’t know it either. But I’ve installed a dead man’s switch. It’s… voice triggered. Only we know the trigger words.”

Keith looked at the other girl, who was watching him intently. Sae continued, “The trigger words will make his mindpal drop the network connection, and all nanites and the nanofactory will shut down immediately. Only a small, controlled channel will remain open, going directly to me.”

“Well, why haven’t you done that already?” Keith exclaimed. “Having that thing walk around is dangerous. To everyone!”

“I don’t necessarily disagree, “ Sae said, at the same time as Rashi responded. In a quiet voice, almost to herself, the girl said, “If my suspicions are correct, there is a much bigger risk out there, and Goose is our only chance to learn more about it.” Keith noticed Sae sending the other girl a quizzical look at this, as Rashi continued in a firmer voice,

“Also. Nick is still in there. If we trigger the switch, there’s no guarantee he can ever come back. Right now, his brain is disconnected from his body. If we trigger the signal…” Rashi shuddered. “We will trap Nick in his brain”.

Keith watched them, thinking fast. Considering the situation, he created and discarded options. The new information forced him to add more variables, more perspectives…

“I understand the danger to your friend. Still… that alien can…” Keith sighed. “It poses a risk to all humans. Not just to him or us. There is an immediate danger here. If it gets loose, if it spreads in our networks. It’s already shown both an ability and a willingness to put its own mission ahead of humans.”

“Sure, but…” Rashi answered. “Goose wants to save his People, and yeah, he is willing to… take some steps to ensure his mission succeeds. He doesn’t really have any interest in harming humans. I think what he did to Nick was a last resort. He’s had plenty of chances to do worse, you know. And… I, we, believe his mission is worthwhile. That’s why we’ve been helping him.”

“Ok, I’ll bite”, Keith said. “Why is his mission worth it to us? What is so important that you took this risk?”

As Rashi tried to explain, Keith sat quietly. The story was bizarre and unbelievable, and Keith would have rejected it out of hand, if only… If only it didn’t fit into other things he had learned since he teamed up with Agent Smythe and his team. Information and data they had tried to keep from him.

When the girl paused for breath, Keith cut in. “So. The signal we captured was only a sliver of this civilization, and the rest is… out there. Flying through space. And this… Goose… intends to find and collect it. How is that even possible? All of this happened… Far away, and hundreds of years ago. How far away is even the alien’s home system?”

“About 600 light years, “ Sae said. “So, the signal would have travelled about the same distance along another vector again. Which brings us back to the present. I think Goose plans to somehow change the astrogation data on The Pegasus to intercept the backup signal. Having hijacked Nick is kind of the jackpot there. He’s the resident expert on astrogation, so he has all the codes. He’s the one who programs the targeting computers.”

“But there must be some kind of target verification? Some check?”

“There is. The captain needs to confirm the target data. But… well. You’ve seen what Goose can do. Spoofing the captain's auth code is child’s play to him.”

“But…” Keith looked around. “We need to stop him. Before he does that!”

“And this is where you come in, “ Rashi said. “This is where we need your help. We can… disable the alien, but we need you to keep quiet about this with the captain.”

“And if I don’t? If I overpower the two of you right here and right now?”

“Two things. One, you won’t be able to overpower both of us before one of us signals Nick and tells him you are here, and two, you won't be able to unlock that door over there.”

Looking at Rashi, Sae continued, “I don’t think they store any food or drink down here, do you?”

“And… and if I just pretend to go along? And as soon as I’m away from here, I go to the captain?”

“Let’s just say we have some safeguards against that too”, Sae said. Her voice was back to the soft, low voice, and Keith took a deep breath. He didn’t like being pressed into a corner, but this time the corner coincided with the option he had chosen to proceed.

“Ok, I agree. So, what is your plan?”

As Sae and Rashi explained, a voice rang out.

“Two more minutes until we resume two gee acceleration. All crew, please find your seats.”