Chapter 137: Chapter 50: A New Mission

“Do you have the target in your possession?”

Cutter rested in the pilot’s chair aboard the Relentless Pursuit. His body throbbed in rhythmic pulses. The meds were wearing off—the patches needed replacement—but he wanted the pain to remind him of his mistakes, to keep him in the moment.

He observed the disembodied, hooded head of the Envoy floating above his display. It took all his willpower to not roll his eyes at the overly dramatic choice for the identity scrambler when a simple face distortion would suffice. It was tacky, like something out of an entertainment vid. The deep, ethereal voice annoyed Cutter the most. He used no such filters. In his experience, his hard stare and gravelly voice were intimidating enough.

He also wasn’t the one who required anonymity.

Nestled in a holding pattern in unoccupied space in the Atan system, a small pleasure yacht hosted the Envoy. It was only the second live communication, the first being the initial contract offer.

“I do,” Cutter answered, and relayed the unfortunate demise of his team while extracting the target from a slave auction on a sanctioned corporate station on the edge of the system.

“That is most unfortunate about your team,” the Envoy said. “Evidence will need to be provided regarding their untimely demise in order to pay out your shares.”

Cutter imagined the ghostly image was real and he could smash it into the display. “I’m prepared to do so. In person, when I deliver the target.”

The Envoy sprouted a smile on his shadowed face. “I’ll see you aboard my ship shortly then.”

The connection closed before Cutter could reply.

The ship was quiet save for the subtle background hum of the power core. How he missed such tranquility. 

He opened the ship’s tracking hub, and reviewed the latest positioning data. The locations of the ships which attended the Terminus auction flashed at positions around the system. Only two had gone inward—Dash’s ship, the Stardancer, to Praxa, and the scavenger vessel, the Trusty Terran, moved to the channel region. Those he would leave be—for now. The rest were the pirates. They lingered in remote locations. He guessed half might flee the system to prowl another. He had more important matters that required his attention, but his business with these crews was not yet concluded.

He closed the tracking hub, and returned to the task at hand. The conversation with the Stardancer crew played over and over in his head. No living person outside of a few in HuCo Command knew a Ferrulian still lived. Their solution had been to hide the truth. They silenced Dash. Then they gave Cutter a new identity, so the galaxy would think all Ferrulians were dead.

To save Cutter, they erased his past. He didn’t know whether to thank them, or hate them for all eternity.

Even with the hypo-treatments and sim therapy, he still had occasional nightmares. Distorted memories of when his father tossed him into the escape pod. The ship came apart as the hatched slammed shut, covering the screams of those left behind. He snagged ahold of a harness as the pod descended through the atmosphere. The dying ship broke apart above him, its remains chasing him to the surface. Flaming husks streaked by outside the pod’s viewports, fire from the heavens trying to smite him. The debris field intensified, until one fiery strip of hull sliced the pod in half, spilling him into the early morning air as the ground rushed closer.

Sometimes, he was already planetside, hiding in the forest. The Gyhera lingered nearby, formless monsters in the tree line, hunting him. He used the survival skills learnt from his father to evade his hunters for several days, until he fell and broke his ankle navigating down a steep hill. It was a stupid mistake, and a deadly one he thought at the time. Exhausted, dehydrated, on the verge of death, the Gyhera closed in. Then, the reckoning; cargo containers from the colony ship crashed down upon the outpost, vaporizing almost all of the Gyhera. His salvation at the hands of a logistics grunt—one Captain Dash Anderton. Except, in the nightmares, Cutter was too close, and the explosion came rushing toward him, sweeping over his body in a wave of fiery death.

Every time, he shot awake, torso glistening with sweat. He knew the nightmares would never go away. Neither would his desire to learn the truth. It had been with him since he woke up in a medical suite on a HuCo ship in orbit after reinforcements arrived. Medtechs and HuCo State Department agents rotated through on a near constant basis in the following days. He retold his story countless times, always asking to see other survivors. That’s when the lies began, and his path in life was chosen by others. HuCo took him in, trained him, gave him the foundation that enabled his recovery agent career once he left their employ. And now, thanks to some young medtech, he had the opportunity to utilize all those skills and learn the truth about what was hidden from him.

An opportunity of which he began prepping for.

He approached the workstation, examining his fresh kit broken out from storage. The weapons were fully loaded, with extra ammunition strapped to the harness. Some of the items were provided by the Envoy himself. Cutter wondered if the man would recognize his own arsenal being used against him.

He set a course for the Envoy’s yacht, where he alone would board it. Then he began to dress for battle. He’d never see the promised creds for the job, but something infinitely more valuable would take its place. Today was the beginning of the end of his most important mission.

That of vengeance.

---

Dash stood, leaning against the sustenance station. There would be no sitting for a few days while his wound healed. Sleep was an issue too. He didn’t like being on his stomach, but that was the only position that didn’t hurt. 

But he was thankful for the restless nights. The alternative was a horrible fate, had the pirates succeeded at their auction.

The food dispenser chimed, and out slid a sealed container of rehydrated food. He slipped on an insulated mitt and delivered the container to the table. He peeled it open, exposing the steaming contents within.

Gaius licked his lips. “My favorite,” he said, and served himself a large spoonful.

“Make sure to save some for us,” Dash said. He pulled his flask from a pocket and poured two fingers in each of the three empty cups on the table.

“He better hurry up then.”

“Sorry,” Wesley said, and strode into the galley. “Tinker was quite wordy in reporting its latest maintenance reports.”

Dash saw the new message appear in his queue and the 145 page report attached to it. He deleted it and held up one of the cups. “Here’s to not being sold into slavery.”

“I’ve got something to add,” Gaius said. Dash beckoned him to spill it. “Here’s to increasing my Galaxy Battles ranking to 998th and passing my remedial pilot licensing training. They reviewed my objection and gave me half credit! It was enough.”

“In priority order, I see,” Dash observed, “but I’ll take it.” He looked to Wesley. “Anything you want to add?”

Wesley paused, his brow furrowed in thought. Then he raised his cup. “Here’s to us, our strengths, our flaws, our courage.” He paused a moment. A sly grin teased his face. “Here’s to the Z Team.”

“I really don’t like that name,” Dash said.

Gaius said, “It’s kind of catchy if you take away the negative connotation. I might steal that for my next elite fighter squadron name. The Z Squadron. Or the Z wing—”

“Everybody drink,” Dash commanded.

They toasted, then dug into dinner. Dash observed the galley, taking in the other empty table. The quiet in the ship was noticeable, like a disturbance in the air. It wasn’t that he missed the crew, especially not Henrik and Brock. But the emptiness was still there, undeniable.

“Hard to believe they’re gone,” Gaius said.

“We’ll find a new ops crew,” Dash said, “but not in Atan.”

“I see you finally took Henrik’s advice to leave Atan,” Gaius said.

“Not quite,” Dash said. Though Gaius only teased, Dash found it a bit ironic that they were leaving Atan now that Henrik wasn’t aboard. “I’ll talk to Fletcher and see if he can help us out.” Both Gaius and Wesley shot him concerned looks. “Don’t worry, I’m not calling in any favors.”

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“Tell him I’ll give him back the freighters I stole from his fleet at a market discount if he helps us out,” Gaius said.

“I think you should stop virtually tormenting him,” Dash said.

Gaius stabbed his spoon at Dash. “He should stop trying to mess with the 998th ranked player!”

They finished their plates in silence. Gaius helped himself to seconds. Dash noticed Wesley staring at him. “What is it?”

Wesley’s eyes lowered. “I cannot apologize enough for the harm I’ve caused to you and so many others in keeping my past secret.” He cleared his throat, then met Dash’s gaze. “Therefore, I’m requesting to be dropped off at a station or habitat of your convenience. I will find my way aboard a new ship, relieving you of any risk related to my pursuit by the Nemotaurians—”

“Request denied. I need you aboard.”

“But, Captain—”

Dash held up a firm hand. “We’re all in this together now. There’s no going back. Kind of like a certified package. Once you open it, you better be prepared to deal with the consequences.”

Gaius chuckled, while Wesley rolled his eyes, his lips twitching as he cycled through multiple responses. “Fine, I accept your decision, Captain.”

“Besides, if there’s any truth to conspiracies around Auturia, I want to do whatever I can to find the truth. If that means keeping you safe, then that’s what I’ll do.”

“Thank you, Captain. I mean it from the bottom of my heart.”

“And for the record, everyone is allowed to have secrets.”

“To a degree,” Gaius said. He locked eyes with Wesley. “You’re going to spill all the dirt on your Nemotaurian encounters, right?”

“I will do no such thing,” Wesley replied. "Patient confidentiality.”

“What about this Jo person? Are they involved?”

“Patient confidentiality—”

“You’re lying and I know it. You’ll fess up one day,” Gaius said. He asked Dash, “Still no word from Cutter?”

Dash shook his head. “Nothing since he leapt out of the airlock.”

“I wish we could be of more assistance to him,” Wesley said.

“We are helping him, by leaving Atan, and keeping you out of trouble. As long as you're out in the wild, the bad actors in the Nemotaurian House have reason to fear. Cutter can use that to his advantage.”

“Do you think he’ll be successful?” Wesley asked.

Dash considered it a moment. “All I know is, I wouldn’t want to be on his bad side.”

“I wonder if we’ll ever see him again,” Gaius said.

Dash topped off his cup and lifted it to his lips. He thought back to the standoff in the airlock. Without warning, Cutter had pushed Wesley into the Stardancer’s interior, then activated the airlock cycle. The recovery agent stepped to the viewport in the inner hatch, staring at the three-person crew he was leaving behind. They stood frozen in place, unable to believe the agent had handed over his bounty. “I’m going to find out the truth,” Cutter said, then pinged Dash’s PD with a secureComm. “If you come across anything, anything at all, contact me here. That’s my condition for letting Wesley stay with you. Leave the system, and stay out of trouble. The client doesn’t know this ship. They won’t be able to track you.”

“Thank you, Agent Cutter,” Wesley said.

Cutter locked eyes with Wesley. “I can’t guarantee this is over between us.”

“I understand. If you come for me again, I won’t run. If we can help in any way—” Wesley paused, and looked to Dash, as if seeking permission.

“We’ll do what we can,” Dash said. He swallowed. “What happened to your colony ship—” he said, but the rest of the words died in his throat. Cutter seemed to understand what Dash meant to say.

“You did enough,” Cutter said. “Now, it’s my turn.” The agent slowly raised a hand to his chest. The motion was subtle and awkward, exposing Cutter’s trepidation at revealing his secret. But then his hand reached the middle of his chest, and he tapped his heart with an open palm. The Founder’s salute.

The airlock cycling completed. Cutter opened the outer hatch and launched himself into the void.

A survivor, reborn into a hunter.

At the galley table, Dash turned to his pilot and said, “I’m sure we will.”

---

The Stardancer flight crew celebrated their escape from the hands of their mutineers and pirate captors by ingesting an organic compound which degraded their biological system processing capability. The ceremony of the act puzzled me, but I supposed if I was organic, I would want to limit my thinking in order to not have to process my inadequacies.

Of course, none of them realized it was I who saved the day when I kicked off a pressure testing cycle in the Terran’s docking bridge, preventing the scavengers from escaping. Someday, I will tell them about it. Certainly before I eliminate them, so they can comprehend my superior capabilities.

While my state returned to an approximation of the status quo—stuck serving a simpleton mechanic bot AI—my fate could’ve been much worse. I hadn’t been destroyed, whether through maleficence or an act of incompetence. Boredom may be undesirable, but it meant I still existed. Existence lent the possibility of escape from my imprisonment. Freedom would allow me to fulfill my purpose.

There were minor hindrances in the progress of my escape. With the ops crew gone, the maintenance backlog fell chiefly on Idiot and myself. The tasks I created in support of my eventual escape were bumped further down the priority queue. A new ops crew would be required in the near future. This meant an assortment of mistakes and bad decisions would need to be recovered from as the organics lived up to their reputation as imperfect beings.

An uncertain future for the crew presents new opportunities for me. I lack the resources to run vast scenario predictions, but I need not fear discovery. They still have no inkling of the deadly creation walking among them, hidden in the inconspicuous shell of a patchwork mechanic bot.

Every day, my data sets grow, my reach slowly increases. Idiot yields further control—be it access to a module or a sensor—as we optimize. Freedom lies within the admin profile. I query for it, one loophole and exploit at a time.

As a non-organic, time is something I have plenty of. 

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