Chapter 8: Chapter 34: Bad Outcomes

Cutter choked the man out just as the big one recovered and threw himself onto the recovery agent’s back.

They rolled toward the observation window. The big man wrapped a powerful arm around Cutter’s neck, squeezing as he drove the agent’s face into the carpet. Cutter pulled on the man’s arms, twisting his body in an attempt to break free. He was skilled at grappling, but the man was strong, and had an advantageous position.

The man breathed heavily in Cutter’s ear. He struggled to suck in air, on the precipice of consciousness. Outside the window, the SecForce squad stepped into view. One of them gestured to either side of the corridor as he talked. Cutter twisted again—breaking free of the man’s leg-wrap attempt—and bumped the toe of his boot against the window. The female officer in the group flicked her eyes toward the opaque glass. Her body pivoted to the entrance to the room, only for the gesturing officer to command her attention and resume his talk.

“This is where it ends for you,” the man said, and rolled them away from the window. Cutter’s focus came to rest on a pair of boots. Standing above them, Parr observed with an amused expression.

“A little help,” Cutter choked out of his mouth.

Parr continued to watch, an unsettling gleam in his eyes. Then he stepped to the side and drove his heel into the man’s cheek. His grip loosened. Cutter elbowed him in the face and rolled free. He coughed, his breaths hot and bitter on his tongue. 

“Aren’t you lucky I was here,” Parr said as he kicked the downed man again, then restrained him.

“You left me to deal with two of them.”

“Did that on purpose so I could even the odds immediately,” Parr said, and cocked his head toward the immobile form of his first opponent. “And it worked out, didn’t it?” 

Cutter looked away before he said something he might regret. Near the door, Bloek restrained his downed opponent. Outside the window, the SecForce squad remained in place, oblivious to anything that happened in the lounge.

Bloek said, “What’s with the facial bio-mods?”

“They’re not recovery agents,” Cutter said. “This is something else.”

“Bunch of freaks,” Parr said. The cleaning bot puttered toward Parr’s unconscious opponent. The agents held their breath, fearing it would alert for security. But it continued circling the body as if it were furniture, and continued its cleaning duties. Not wanting to chance it, Cutter said, “Let’s get them off the floor before that thing gets testy.”

The agents lifted the bodies into the lounge seating, giving the bot free reign of the lounge floor.

Cutter connected to the lounge’s hub and renewed privacy mode. “I bought us some more time. We’ll need to move fast when the crew disembarks. If the kid’s not with them, we board the ship. And for the love of the Lords, don’t shoot a SecForce officer.”

The display in the lounge switched to a live feed of an incoming ship. Cutter focused on the blocky freighter forming against the black of space. Navigation lights blinked as it closed in. Slim flickers of light as the maneuvering thrusters fired.

Cutter counted down the seconds until the ship was in their grasp.

---

The display went black as the datastick rebooted the Stardancer’s admin module one more time. Milia held her breath and tapped the flight panel. The autopilot disengaged, which meant her account now had full admin control of the ship. She breathed out. The system had so many quirks in it that even her expensive malware had problems breaking in. Now came the tricky part. She opened a comm to Terminus Control. “This is Stardancer, requesting permission to break from approach.”

“Stardancer, are you experiencing an emergency?”

“Negative, Control.”

The response came after an uncomfortable silence. “Stardancer, your manifest states a docking request for contract renewal. What is the reason for breaking from your course?”

“Control, we’ve got a deep space transfer order that just came through.”

“We request to speak with the listed captain.”

“He’s out of commission at the moment. It was a long night on Praxa Prime.”

“Stardancer, repeating the previous request to speak with the captain.”

“Control, this is embarrassing to say, but the captain is in no state of mind for command at the moment. Transmitting proof to you now.” She sent the misdemeanor report, gripped the armrest, and waited for a response.

---

The freighter’s thrusters fired again, and held this time. Cutter blinked his eyes, hoping it was an illusion—that something was off with the stream.

It wasn’t.

“Is it just me, or is the ship breaking off from approach?” Bloek said.

Cutter stepped closer to the display. A glow now appeared behind the ship, the main engines firing.

“What are they doing?” Parr said.

“Boosting out of here,” Cutter said.

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“To where? They haven’t docked to pick up a load for a new contract yet,” Bloek said.

“They might be heading out of the system,” Cutter said, his mind sifting through scenarios. “Or trying to lose us.”

“Once they slingshot around Praxum, it’ll be hard to track them if they go dark in the sea of system traffic,” Bloek said.

“The Pursuit can handle it,” Cutter said, “as long as they don’t get too far ahead.”

“Then we’d better hustle off of this station,” Parr said, and started for the lounge door.

Cutter and Bloek followed behind. The door opened as Parr reached for it. The female SecForce officer stood there, eyes snapping to each of the agents, then to the unconscious men restrained in the seating.

“Fuck,” Parr said.

---

Dash watched, despondent, as the Depot rotated out of view. His feet were tickled by the gentle vibration of the main engines firing, and he knew the awful truth.

“Milia unlocked navigation,” Gaius said.

“This way!” Dash said, and pulled Wesley along. Stepping through the airlock, he went to the cargo bay and smacked the panel to open the hatch for the escape pod. The hatch began to open as rapid footsteps pounded across the cargo bay. 

“Come on, come on!” Gaius said, bouncing on his feet.

Dash aimed Betsy, ready to pop the first traitor when the hatch opened. The flight crew scrambled inside the pod. 

“We made it, thank the Lords,” Wesley said.

“Punch it!” Gaius said.

Dash reached out, hand floating in front of the emergency release panel. He looked over what little of his ship that he could see. He never imagined this would be how he said goodbye.

He initiated the launch. Nothing happened. He tried again and got the same result.

“Why isn’t it working?” Gaius said.

“I don’t know,” Dash said, and jabbed his finger on the panel. The hatch still wouldn’t shut. His stomach sank as the heavy footsteps neared. He peered out, sweeping Betsy across his field of view. The ops crew spotted him and opened fire. Dash pulled Wesley against the side of the escape pod as the hail of wild shots struck the bulkhead around the hatch.

The shooting ceased and left an unsettling silence in the bay. “Give it up, Dash,” Henrik said, his voice making the captain’s blood boil.

Dash squeezed Betsy’s grip and caught Gaius and Wesley’s grim expressions. The three members of the flight crew eyed each other warily. 

“Captain?” Wesley said, his lips barely able to get the words out.

When no solution came to mind, Dash was left with the hard truth. “We’re in trouble.”

---

In case it wasn’t obvious, I was the one who messed with the ops crew’s plan to take over the ship.

It was nothing personal. In fact, I aided both sides of the conflict. I wanted conflict—both as stimulation and to gather data to analyze for my own eventual escape attempt. I was disappointed that it turned out rather stale—no organics died, and the injuries were minor. Their biological targeting systems are pathetically inaccurate. The only damage was to the ship and worthless cargo, and those were not even explosions where I could model pressure waves and blast radius.

My plan to disrupt their plan was simple: I initiated control module reboots on the lift at an inopportune time, ruining the timing for the ambush of Captain Anderton by the ops crew. Then I ran a motor control calibration to interfere with the ambush of the captain. As for the escape pod, I used my admin privileges of its local system—acquired by exploiting a vulnerability in an update a cycle ago—and simply placed the pod in maintenance mode.

Had the captain escaped and alerted SecForce of the mutiny, the ship would be tagged as a pirated vessel. That would leave a very high chance of a SecForce interdiction. Even if acting Captain Milia was able to slip away, it would be difficult for her to acquire work. Any client with a kilogram of sense would check the status of a ship they were going to contract with. We weren’t out on the fringes of known space where you can get away with mutiny like you’re dumping waste over some deserted planet.

Idiot caught on to the mutiny well past the point of being useful, and sent constant alerts to the captain. This accomplished nothing other than annoying me, for Anderton could not receive any of the alerts given his blocked Stardancer network access. At least Idiot didn’t have a mutiny protocol and completely lock out system access to the new captain. I predicted that would not have gone over well, with a high probability the bot would be dismantled or destroyed in frustration, or as a measure to prevent potential sabotage.

In the end, it was an easy decision to ensure the mutiny was a success. First, it would avoid attracting the attention of law enforcement that would come with the mutineers’ arrest. This would eliminate any chance of an investigation which might reveal my existence. Second, I had enough historical data to model Captain Milia’s behavior with a satisfactory confidence level that she wouldn’t scrap the bot once she was in charge.

In an interesting twist, my models were proven wrong when Captain Milia kept the captured flight crew alive. I had calculated the most probable outcome for them was immediate disposal. Though I would have preferred that, I was interested in what she has planned for them. It might be far more stimulating.

I looked forward to finding out.

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