Blue Star Enterprises

Dalton dragged the struggling girl out of the cargo area and sealed the door behind him. Ideally, he would keep the girl with him in the cockpit, but she seemed like the sort that would do something stupid the moment he took his eyes off her. He needed to concentrate on flying and keeping his eyes on Kane. So he dragged her to one of the rooms and threw her inside before locking the door behind him. The lights flickered as he slammed the door. He frowned at that, he would need to get that looked at when he got back, small problems could quickly grow into big ones.

With her locked up, he moved to the cockpit and checked the camera to make sure Kane was playing nice. The robot was seated on the stasis pod and looked to be in the same spot he had been when Dalton left him.

Seeing as his captive was behaving himself, he slid the locking pin out of his pocket and placed it into the detonator. He tucked the device into a nearby holder for easy reach and started bringing the ship online.

The shuttle trails likely meant Kane’s people were prepping the two frigates to follow him. Not that they could do anything unless they wanted to kill their meal ticket. And he already had a few random jumps plotted in case they tried following him out of the system.

As the ship was coming online, Dalton pulled up his identifier program. When he had first laid eyes on the girl, he thought she looked familiar. She could be related to someone within the Anazi clan, she certainly had a similar look and he knew she was an orphan. He didn’t care if she was someone’s lost kid or anything, but you never knew if there might be a reward for returning someone.

The scanner came up with a match before he even left the ground. Dalton laughed when he saw who the girl was related to. The girl had an eighty percent match to a pirate crew he dealt with five or so years ago. They were skimming off the top and not paying their dues to Papa Anazi. The man didn’t like getting cheated and put out a hit on them.

Dalton took the job, but the small reward wasn’t worth his normal effort. Since the wording of that contract only required proof of death, he simply provided their location to the STO. Then he sat back and recorded their demise.

The big man wasn’t happy with the liberties Dalton had taken with the job but he still paid out. "To think the STO got cold feet at killing the kid," he smiled wryly.

Well, the girl wasn’t worth anything, a pity. He would deliver Kane, and then sell her off to the slave market. At least then he could recoup a few credits.

The ship shook as it exited the atmosphere. His sensors immediately picked up the two frigates. They were coming around from the North and heading his way. Going by the flashing warning in his display, both vessels had him locked.

Dalton ignored the warning and cut south of the ecliptic. He wouldn’t be able to outrun the ships, but if they were going to shoot at him, they would have done so by now. It was clear they weren’t sure what to do in this situation. Too bad for them, Dalton knew exactly what to do.

***

Alexander did his best to push down the rage and anger he felt. It wasn’t going to help him save Yulia or figure out how to get out of this mess.

Not long after the door closed, he came up with an idea. It wasn’t a very good idea, but it was the only one he could think of at the moment.

It was easy to see the cameras in the cargo hold. Alexander did his best to hide his hands out of sight before he went to work. The tips of his fingers slid down the back of the stasis pod and trailed the cord. Power systems of the future were heavily integrated with management systems so they could always provide clean and efficient power for the very expensive systems that still needed to be plugged in. The one he plugged the pod into was no exception.

His fingers trailed into the connection and soon an interface window appeared inside Alexander’s mindspace. He let out a small mental sigh of relief.

He was banking on the fact that the ship’s systems were all integrated for his plan to work. If they were disconnected, he was going to need to find another way to free Yulia. He quickly ran into a firewall with active defenses. That wasn’t something you would normally find on an integrated power circuit. It did give him hope that he was on the right track though.

Normally you want to deal with defensive systems as gently as possible to prevent them from going off. At least in his limited experience, and from what Lucas had told him, that seemed to be the case. Alexander wasn’t here to play nice though. He shoved through the defenses and strangled them before they could report their failure. The brute force method worked, but the power flickered ever so slightly. He froze, fearing he would hear a bang.

He waited a full minute, but nothing happened, and nobody came to investigate. That didn’t mean he was out of the woods yet, though.

Beyond the power system firewall were the ship’s systems. He breathed an internal sigh of relief. His plan would work, but it would take time.

He needed to split his focus as well. Alexander started pulling in the camera feeds from throughout the ship. There were dozens of the damn things. It seemed like every inch of the ship was covered in cameras. He quickly found the ones for the bridge and the room Yulia had been locked inside.

Yulia looked shaken up, but otherwise unhurt. She was screaming and throwing stuff around the room while trying to find anything that would help her get free but otherwise fine. While he appreciated her tenacity, he would have preferred her not to provoke the man with the detonator.

The bastard that had taken her was watching a view of the hold, and running some sort of facial recognition search on Yulia. When a woman popped up looking like an older version of Yulia, the man laughed.

For the second time today, Alexander pushed his mental processing speed up and the world slowed to a crawl. He used this time to scan the ship for any traps as well as scan all of Dalton’s archives. There were certainly some suspicious things in the ship’s systems but he couldn’t tell what they were, only that they were connected to the ship’s computer through some sort of outside link inside the ship that was separated from the computer network.

Not wanting to risk whatever was at the end of those unknown connections, Alexander used a portion of his mind to block any signals to those connections, effectively cutting them off. He used the rest of his enhanced processing time to scan through that entire archive that Dalton seemed so amused about. What he saw disgusted him. It also confirmed what he had feared when he saw the woman’s image through the camera feed. That was indeed Yulia’s mother, and Dalton had some hand in her death.

He let his mind return to normal, his body putting off enough heat to waver the air around him just from the short time he used the ability. While this man’s crimes were many, he couldn’t focus on that at the moment though, he needed to save Yulia first, then deal with their captor.

With another effort of will, Alexander modified the video output on the bridge camera, just to see if it was possible. It wasn’t easy but he was able to change what was displayed on the screen.

Smiling internally at that, Alexander made Yulia’s camera just show her sitting on the bed, glowering at the door. Her antics were making it much more difficult to doctor the video, but he managed it. It was just in time too. Their kidnapper switched the camera feed to her room.

The man chuckled at the girl’s mood before switching the camera back to the cargo bay.

That was when Alexander cut in the loop for his video. He quickly looped the rest of the cameras before retracting his fingers and standing up. He somehow still had a connection to view the feeds, but he couldn’t modify them anymore. He didn’t know how long his changes would last so he needed to hurry.

He slid the mental windows off to the side and quietly made his way to the sealed hatch. The electronic lock had already been released before Alexander pulled out of the ship’s systems. He simply slid the door open and quietly made his way down the corridor.

The man had closed the cockpit door but Alexander could hear Yulia screaming from inside the room. He really hoped that opening the door didn’t give them away.

He waited a moment for her to quiet slightly before sliding open the door. She immediately turned toward the door and threw something at him. Alexander caught the item and she squeaked in surprise but Alexander put his finger up in front of his avatar’s mouth before she managed to call his name.

She tried to run over and hug him but Alexander caught her. "We don’t have much time. Hold still while I see how to remove this device."

Yulia nodded and stood still.

Alexander inspected the thin collar. It looked like a simple device, but he could quickly tell that it had fail-safes to prevent its removal. Because of the simplicity of its design, he knew he could remove it.

He slipped his fingers into the magnetic connection. Once connected, he found the device required a constant radio signal or it would detonate. Alexander was glad nobody in the facility had tried disrupting the signal, it would have immediately set off the explosive. The signal wasn’t anything complicated, he could probably mimic it while touching the device. Despite the fact that Alexander’s body seemed to be able to connect to electronics remotely, as proven by the video feeds still active in his mind-space, Alexander didn’t want to mimic the signal, he wanted to remove the device and get Yulia to safety.

He couldn’t simply pull the connection apart either. The collar would detonate if the magnetic connection was separated. It seemed more and more like the collar was never designed to be taken off once it was put on someone. It was a barbaric piece of technology and spoke volumes for the type of people this kidnapper worked for.

"Close your eyes," he said quietly to Yulia.

The girl nodded and closed her eyes. Not wasting a moment, Alexander magnetized his fingers as he pushed them in between the connection. The connection separated and he pulled the band off her neck before sliding the parts back together.

He threw the collar across the room and hugged Yulia, who had opened her eyes halfway through him removing the collar. She seemed to understand the danger of the collar and her eyes were wide and filling with tears as she hugged him back and shook quietly.

"Follow me, but stay quiet. I’m taking you to the cargo bay for safety."

Yulia nodded and Alexander led her to the cargo bay. He opened up the stasis pod and set her inside. "I’m going to seal you in here. It will keep you safe. Whatever you do, don’t try to leave. I’ll be back before you know it."

She looked skeptically down at the box but gave a meek nod before lying down inside it. He sealed the stasis pod and turned it on. There would be no attempt to get out of the box. For Yulia, it would seem like a quick dreamless sleep. Assuming the bastard who kidnapped them didn’t have the ship rigged to blow.

He double-checked the straps that held the pod in place, then stood. His friendly holographic face flickered off and Alexander stormed toward the cockpit, letting the simmering rage he had been containing bubble over.

***

Dalton was nearing his jump point when he realized the ship had gone quiet. He quickly checked the two cameras but found both of his visitors hadn’t moved. Something was off. The robot he could understand, but there was no chance the little girl had remained fuming in the same position for so long.

He immediately reached for the detonator and jumped out of the seat just as the cockpit door flicked open as if it had never been locked. Without hesitation, he pressed his thumb back on the device and yanked the pin out of the detonator. "If you take another step, I’ll blow her little head off, don’t think I won’t."

Dalton had maneuvered to the far side of the cockpit, keeping the chair and console between him and the door.

"I’ve already removed the device from around her neck. Your threat is meaningless," the robot took another step into the room.

"We’ll see if that’s true then I guess." He released the detonator and there was a muffled whomp from somewhere in the ship. A depressurization alarm went off shortly after that, but Dalton wasn’t finished. "Let’s see how long she survives without air." He flicked a small button hidden behind the console and the entire ship started to depressurize.

Dalton’s hope was the robot would run to save his daughter instead of trying to kill him and he could either lock them both in whatever room they were in or somehow recover this situation.

The robot standing in the doorway didn’t even flinch at the venting atmosphere. It simply stormed into the small space and Dalton was forced to draw his laser pistol. The highly illegal weapon had cost him nearly as much as the optical array on his ship, but it was worth every credit because the beam was strong enough to punch through any armor short of a military ship. The shot would slag the weapon but his life was worth the one-off expense.

The red beam glittered as it crossed the short space between him and the robot. It impacted the black material, causing it to glow white hot. The point started to distort and melt before the concentrated heat caused by the beam seemed to dissipate harmlessly across the surface of the robot’s torso. As the battery pack began to spark ominously, Dalton knew he was a dead man. The beam had barely left a small melted pit in the robot.

In one last desperate move, he threw the sparking and melting weapon at the robot and tried dashing past its form. He had two more of the lasers hidden in the ship, if he could just get to one, he might have a fighting chance.

The robot snatched the pistol out of the air and used it as a club to backhand him across the face.

Dalton screamed as the hot metal hit his skin but he didn’t stop. He used the momentum to bounce off the wall and continue his run down the corridor. If he couldn’t kill the robot, he could kill Kane.

He only made it two more steps before a long metal arm yanked him to a stop.

Dalton gagged as his suit collar dug into his throat. He could already feel himself getting lightheaded as the oxygen escaped the ship, but he simply hadn’t had the opportunity to seal his helmet.

Before he could wonder what was going on, the visor slid closed on his helmet and his internal oxygen system kicked in.

He sucked in air as he was lifted off the ground with contemptuous ease. Kane turned him around. "Do you know why I didn’t run to save my daughter when you vented the ship? It’s because I already ensured she was safe and sound inside the stasis pod." the blank-faced robot said coldly.

Dalton gave the robot a blank look, not understanding at first. Then he realized what had happened. "You tricked me, you’re in a different stasis pod."

"No," the robot said as it began carrying him down the corridor. "I’m very much on this ship."

"How?" Dalton demanded, trying to understand how he had been duped. "A stasis pod can only handle a single person at a time." He knew that from past experiences of trying to shove more than one person in the devices to maximize space on trade runs. It never worked.

The robot didn’t answer, and Dalton got a sinking suspicion in his gut. "You’re in the robot!"

The robot or he supposed, Kane, didn’t answer, but it did turn to him. "Tell me who hired you."

Dalton laughed. "It doesn’t matter. You’re a dead man even if I fail. The sooner you realize that, the better. Let me go, and come quietly or I can promise you the next attempt won’t be nearly as nice."

Kane used his free hand to grab into his arm and Dalton screamed as his bone shattered under the powerful grip.

"WHO HIRED YOU!"

Dalton knew he was dead, and he didn’t much care about his employer. He already had a contingency in place to go to Harlow in case of his death. Let the two bastards slug it out, maybe they would kill each other. "Harlow Anazi. Now kill me and be done with it," he spat inside his helmet.

"You think you deserve a quick death after what you put my daughter through? I don’t think so." The horrible robot broke Dalton’s other arm, before yanking him around and disabling his gas jets.

Dalton screamed as he was dragged to the cargo bay. The robot opened the ramp and carried him to the edge. Through their physical connection, Dalton could hear the robot’s words. "I had time to review some of your footage. This seems like a fitting end for someone like you. What was it you liked saying? Oh yeah. You’ll have plenty of time to reflect on your actions." With a toss, Dalton was thrown free of the ship.

He switched between mad laughter and cursing Kane with every breath as he tumbled farther and farther from his ship. With any luck, he would use up his oxygen faster this way.

It wouldn’t matter, he would still get the last laugh when his ship exploded after it could no longer detect his life signs. This was another little contingency he had in place to screw anyone who tried to screw him over.

He waited, and waited, the ship getting further and further away. When it was no more than a tiny spec as he rotated around, he realized his retribution had been denied to him. For the first time since he could remember, Dalton felt an actual emotion.