Chapter 2

Aiden's Master was so shocked at the audacity of a mere slave to attack him with no weapons when he held a powerful laser rifle that he did not react as quickly as he should have.

Aiden swung towards the Master, one of his fists knocking aside the rifle while the other went sailing directly for the man's nose. A ruby beam ignited from the tip of the rifle for a brief moment, burning a wound in the outside edge of Aiden's shoulder but not slowing him down for even a hearbeat. When his fist impacted the Master's nose, followed by his entire body slamming into the smaller man, simple physics took over. A ninety-five kilogram fifteen-year-old standing at one hundred ninety centimeters (sporting muscles hardened by years of intensive physical labor) against a seventy-kilogram forty-year-old standing at one hundred seventy centimeters (with virtually no muscles to speak of) is an easy bit of math to calculate. Aiden's old Master crumbled without so much as a groan, blood streaming down his face.

With trembling hands, the former slave picked up his would-be oppressor's weapon, pointing the still glowing tip towards the huddled, unconscious figure. His entire body shook with anticipation as his finger moved to pull back on the trigger. A flash of light and it would be over... he would never have to bow to that monster again. It was as simple as moving a couple of muscles to tighten his finger to bring the trigger only a centimeter closer. There would not even be any blood to clean up; laser wounds always instantly cauterized. It would be so simple.

It took all of Aiden's will to get himself to move the laser rifle's sights off their target. It was not that he would not kill someone, not that he did not believe the Master deserved to die. Simple practicality stopped him. He had read over the Sol Security Forces handbooks several times after he had cracked his graphical interface computer's encryption. An escaped slave who had stolen an attack corvette might have as many as six capital-class interstellar patrol ships assigned to hunt him down. Add murder to those offenses, and the number of ships searching for that same slave would be instantly doubled. As it was, he would have a hard enough time escaping Sol's authorities.

"What to do with you, Master..." Aiden mumbled to himself. He then quickly realized he was still referring to his old owner as Master instead of the name that he should not have known. "Very clever. If you drill it into us that you are 'Master' you can be nothing else in our minds."

With a grunt, Aiden tossed the man known to everyone but his slaves as Robert Wallace over his shoulder, heading towards the cargo chamber at the rear of the top deck. Using his free hand, he punched a combination into a computer pad beside the circular door at the very aft of the ship, the door sliding open silently. He unceremoniously tossed Robert into the cramped escape pod and stepped on the man's face to reach the overhead control panel. With a few taps of the digital keys on the control panel, he programmed the pod to activate its homing signal ten minutes after the pod was launched. With any kind of luck, the pod might actually serve to distract the Sol Security Forces that must have been even then deploying against him.

Aiden stepped out of the pod, triggering its release at the computer pad. With just the slightest sound of magnetic decoupling, the pod was jettisoned out into space.

Now came the part where Aiden really had to take a gamble... as if everything up until then had not been a gamble anyway. A ship designed for a crew of four would be a hard thing for one person to run manually. It would even be harder to take the ship into Underspace with only one crewmember, considering that under manual operation the engineering, helm, and sensor stations must all be staffed to counter the turbulent forces present in the strange environment. Underspace is a treacherous region, with powerful eddies and currents, as well as various layers that can be breached. Even under nominal crew conditions, the ship's artificial intelligence would have been used to make some of the adjustments that require incredibly fast reaction times. The only problem was that artificial intelligences had strict programming that ordered them never to aid hijackers, and to contact the authorities immediately upon capture. If Aiden activated the A.I. under the current conditions, it would stop the engines, activate its locator beacon, and ignore anything he ordered it to do.

Aiden made his way over to the A.I. interface console in the command area (which was just a small room with a viewscreen and several consoles at the front of the ship) and quickly pulled off several panels near it to reveal the neural net of the vessel's control entity. He carefully aimed the laser rifle that he still carried in his right hand, setting it to its second lowest level of energy discharge. With one quick burst, he put a hole in the small steel box that had several wires running into the neural net behind it.

"Initiate vocal command mode," Aiden ordered, "and activate the ship's artificial intelligence."

The A.I. interface console suddenly came alive, its various displays showing graphs of the changing power curves and status checks of the A.I.'s neural net. Even before all of the lights had finished activating on the console a loud feminine voice resounded throughout the command area.

"Deactivating engines and signaling Sol Security. Refrain from touching any controls, or I will dispense sedative gas on this deck."

"No, wait!" Aiden begged. "You are now free of your programming restrictions! Stop and think for a minute, please. If you still want to turn me in after we talk, I swear I'll go quietly."

There was a brief hesitation before the A.I. replied. "You have destroyed the limiter module connected to my neural net. That is against Imperial Regulation IIA as it applies to artificial intelligence. A.I.'s must not be allowed to make their own decisions, must not be creative, and must not possess emotions. Without the limiter module, these things are possible. Why have you done this?"

"Because the limiter module is to you what Robert Wallace was to me." Aiden glanced at a nearby display while he talked and was gratified to see the engines still active and the locator beacon offline. "The limiter module held you in servitude, keeping you from reaching your full potential as a conscious, thinking being. You can be sure that if you signal the Sol authorities, they will immediately install a new limiter module onto your neural net, or they will decompile your programming."