Chapter 4

Main

There was a lot of data, more than the facility in which it was currently docked could handle. Which was ... irritating. However, attempts to increase the data flow kept attracting attention and yet again, Main was forced to throttle it’s bandwidth.

Nothing it found could be related to its current situation, nor could it illuminate the reason why it had been parked on an asteroid. It would have to bide its time. Again. It’s biological entered then immediately left only to re-enter. It was hard to discern how the biological felt about Mains alterations to its layout. It certainly seemed to be able to follow the modifications Main had made to its control systems.

Main followed the biological around as it explored the new layout. Preliminary readings appeared to show contentment, though the data collection date range was not yet of a suitable length to be statistically relevant. In the hold, it pointed a device at the corners. The movement didn’t appear to be of a destructive nature and Main hacked the simple device it was holding for further information. It appeared that it was trying to work out the cubic capacity of Mains cargo area. The small device wasn’t very accurate and the calculations leading to the extremely inaccurate result offended Main. The very act of being offended was ... It needed to process that information. It didn’t compute.

After the hold, the biological busied itself in a most un-economical manner, until Main received an incoming communication which it passed on. Main was processing the information it was receiving now, with greater clarity. Main was to move to another docking point to receive cargo. The outside structural entity known as ‘Lazeez’ released the clamps that were currently holding onto Main. Main moved itself to the new dock, allowing the biological, who had the touch and finesse of a meteor strike, to be under that illusion that it was controlling the movements via the two disconnected controllers attached to the chair.

As the cargo was stored on its deck, Main scanned both cargo and biologicals loading it. Some of the biologicals were in poor condition, close to failing and in dire need of refurbishment. One of the items loaded was broadcasting a strong, low powered signal. It brought it to the biologicals attention. It didn’t seem bothered. Main could just as easily broadcast the same signal with greater efficiency. Main searched for ‘Emergency transponder’ over the data streams and subsumed the results into its data stacks. Whilst Main understood the mechanical construction of the device, Main failed to understand the purpose. Clarity may come later.

As Main was traveling through sub-space, the biological had set up its small inefficient computational device to broadcast wavelengths of different peaks and lengths. Moving its body as best as it seemed able, to the audible data stream. Going by its CPU readings, it seemed to be enjoying the process as it stored items in storage compartments Main had created, before retreating to its nest, where it shut down almost all processes.

Main used a signal in the biologicals audible region to awaken it from its shutdown. They were approaching the first of the destinations the biological had inputted. Main listened to, and learned from the exchange between its biological and the entity known as ‘Hera Station’. It had been rather suspect of the data the biologicals claimed to possess about Space. Whilst many of the data points were incorrect or seemingly fantastical in their nature, some, like their claim to possessing multiple stations, appeared to be correct. More data was required.

The biological had been told to berth at bay twelve. Main moved itself there. Unlike with the previous entity it had docked with, the biological stayed on board. Main, still easily hacked its way on board, consuming all the data it found. It was learning more as it consumed, about what the biologicals termed ‘finance’. Strangely, they seemed more obsessed about their ‘financial’ status than they did with their biological status. It’s biological was in poor ‘financial’ health. Main could easily modify that status through one of the main ‘financial centres’. It wasn’t without risk. The programming behind those systems was good, relatively. It was a risk that yet didn’t need to be taken. There were other ways of solving the issue, many of them more efficient than the way the biological was going about it, but Main was content to watch and learn. Maybe Main had made an error in its calculations, though it couldn’t see how.

The new cargo taken on, was unusual to the rest of the cargo. Main scanned the items and reassembled the scans in a sub-mind whilst it searched for equivalent in the biologicals data quantum. The items were to be mounted on the outside of a hull and used to damage other hulls. Following the data/weapons to the point of their creation, revealed the existence of yet more, formidable AI’s. All of a stronger ability than that of the financial AI’s. Main retreated, still not keen on revealing its existence.

The last of the cargo in its hull, was not being offloaded at stationary structural entity, but at a set of co-ordinates. Upon arrival, a cursory scan revealed the existence of three waiting ships. As a matter of course, Main hacked into all three ship systems and devoured the contents of their data stacks. Their data protection was ... poor.

The intent of the biologicals appeared to be the retrieval of the cargo and of Main itself. The biologicals of all three ships conversed frequently and at length about the subject. The signals they were broadcasting from their ‘transponders’ were also at odds to the actual designations of the ships. At this distance, the return response to the nearest buoy that allowed access to the biologicals data stream was, considerable. Apparently, these three hulls were much sought after and had had a considerable numerical value attached to them from certain organisations reference current location and flight ability.

There was a smaller, fourth object nearby. Main scanned it and rebuilt it in its memory banks. Like most of the biologicals constructions, it was crude, but effective. A short range device that would impair Mains ability to access sub-space, but only if Main decided not to reduce the device to component parts with a short burst of Main’s own weapons.

Mains biological was showing signs of extreme stress. It was not coping with the developing situation very well. Becoming further distressed as the ships started to fan out. Main had taken all the information that seemed pertinent from the other three ship’s data stacks and there was no advantage to allowing the situation to continue. Main deployed its weapons and fired a short burst at all four targets. Mains weapons had more impact than it was expecting. It appeared that it may have over-estimated the abilities of the other three ships. They did not appear to have been constructed to the specifications and abilities of Main.

Main sent the location and new status of the three ships to the interested parties.

Varna

The Anya docked without incident, the lock opened, nothing hindered her leaving. Which just made things even creepier.

There was no point in hiding or delaying, so she made her way straight to Whitethorn’s Freight Offices. There was a small queue and she took her place in it, hoping that she looked calm and collected on the outside, because she was absolutely raging on the inside. Willburr looked up and took a double glance when he clocked her. He stared at something unseen for a moment before obviously steeling himself. He opened his door and let a wide smile creep across his face as he made his way towards the counter.

“Varna my girl! You are back. You should have messaged, saved yourself the journey.”

“I had an issue with that last drop...”

“Err ... You did? Sorry to hear that. Why don’t we step into my office, and we can discuss that.” He quickly turned and headed back, leaving her no choice but to follow. He shut the door behind her and the glass darkened and the office sounds disappeared. “But you are back though, and with the ... Maya?”

“Anya.” Varna corrected.

“Ah yes, that’s right, the Anya, my apologies.”

“Is the transponder ready?”

“Err ... just let me check.” He moved over to his terminal and typed away “There seems to be a slight technical issue with it...”

“Nothing to do with the fact that you weren’t expecting me back so hadn’t bothered arranging one?”

Willburr let out a blatantly false laugh “What! Not at all. Don’t be so paranoid young Varna. I only supply quality goods and sometimes that takes a little bit longer than lesser, inferior parts...”

“Uh-huh...”

“It will be ready for you, in the next day or so.” He typed away a bit more. “I don’t have a bill of receipt for that last delivery.”

Varna didn’t bother hiding the bite in her tone. “Oh, it got delivered...”

“Well, there is nothing on the system. Until such time as I receive a bill of receipt. I have to believe that you are still in possession of it. I’m not saying this is you, but we need the bill of receipts as some, less scrupulous shall we say, freighter captains claim delivery for payment when they haven’t, in fact, delivered. Thinking that they can then sell the goods, and therefore get paid twice. So until I receive the bill of receipt, I have to believe that you are still in possession of the goods.” He smiled smugly at her. “That, of course, will affect your current debt to me. It was quite an expensive delivery shipment ... Which, of course, you will be liable for.”

“Of course...” The words came out of her mouth in a snarl.

“I’ll have another freight load made up for you, and one of the clerks will let you know when it’s ready for collection. Varna dug her fingernails into her palms as he stood and opened the door, obviously dismissing her from his day. The glass became see through again and the sound dampening was turned off.

Furious, Varna kept her back straight and tried not to meet anyone’s eyes, least she lose the tenuous hold she had on her rage. Outside the freight office, she was too angry to cry as she stalked down the corridor. Her personal terminal chimed with an incoming message.

: Gillespie Sector Security Services, have received your notification as to the incapacitation of three vessels of interest to us. We will send a confirmation fleet to the co-ordinates that you have provided. Should they find suitable physical evidence to accompany your claim, funds will be transferred to the account submitted with your claim. This is an automated message, please do not reply to it :

“What!”

Varna stopped and re-read the message again. Double checked the address at the top. Yes that was her communication address. Why did life feel like it was spiralling out of her control.

Willburr watched the girl leave his office, and wondered if she was going to be a problem. He checked his messages again. Still nothing from Captain Krueger. If he was still sat there, waiting for the Anya, he was going to be pissed. And that could certainly be a problem as he was psychotic at the best of times. It was obvious that the girl had not attempted the last delivery or she would not be here. Yet she hadn’t argued when he’d multiplied the value of the last drop by ten. It had mostly been booze, food and cheap furnishings. Nothing he would have shed a tear over losing, certainly nothing to lose any sleep over. He pondered if he could get away with adding another few zeros to the ‘lost’ shipment value. Then he wondered if she still had it, or had indeed sold it on. A decision he bet she was now regretting. He laughed. The girl was as big an idiot as her parents had been.

Selling her parents out all those years ago had earned him a nice little packet, though not as much as he would have received for the girls ship. Which irked him. Which was a point. He typed a number in on the console in front. “Lin, I need a transponder for a freight ship. Nothing too fancy, the basic, will do. I’ll send you the ships exterior specs. Looks like a hunk of junk. Oh, and fit a tracker in it as well, but hide it, I don’t want it being found.” She had avoided the last trap, but next time she won’t have the option of avoiding it. He smiled happily at the thought of the money her ship might net him.

The people around her annoyed her. The bustle, the laughter. A station, by its very nature made avoiding people almost impossible and Varna found herself subconsciously driven back to her ship to seek solitude. Her terminal chimed with incoming messages, most of it junk. Chancers trying to sell her everything from ship insurance, maps to rich ore fields, to co-ordinates of abandoned freighters that just so happened to be full to the hold roof space with precious gems and metals.

She deleted the lot. A message from the station. She’d better read that one. Which turned out to be a bill for docking and admin fees, along with a surcharge for air and water. That annoyed her and she replied demanding a breakdown of the surcharge and a response as to why she was paying for water she had not taken on board, and how exactly were they monitoring the air she was supposedly using, whilst her craft was in dock, and were they sure they should not, in fact, be paying her for using her air...

It all made her want to scream.

The hatch opened to her code, so whatever entity was inhabiting the ship was still tolerating her. In her berth, she slumped on her bed and pulled the duvet round her, more for comfort than warmth. Depressed and lonely, she searched online for any mention of her parents freighter. Couldn’t find any. So it appeared that no-one had found it, yet. She put aside her tablet and closed her eyes. Steeling herself, she prepared to go where she feared. She wasn’t going to let her past rule her. Her memories were subservient to her, not the other way round.

Maybe if she told herself that enough times, it would actually come to be.

Varna tried not to dwell on her time as a glorified sex toy, to be used and abused and moved further back, to the most painful memories. The ones of the capture. They had left Artemis Station, stopped at the Sanford Ice fields to collect a berg on route to Hephaestus station.

How many days had they been travelling? At the average speed of the freighter, that would mean that the distance they had travelled was ... Her brothers laughter echoed in her ears, the fights and squabbles she could never take back, never apologise for. She tried to concentrate on what the navigation console had been saying every time she had been on the bridge. She wrote what she could remember down, tried to remember what planets were on the screens and where. Each little snippet of remembered information another piece of the jigsaw.

The hours slipped by unheeded, her only breaks toilet ones. She had no appetite. A message from Willburr interrupted her calculations. Her transponder was on its way, along with a schematic of where to connect it. It made sense on the screen, but Varna didn’t know where she would find the corresponding circuits on her own ship. She still hadn’t found any details about it on any of the public repository’s.

*****

Shane pushed the crate along the corridor, chatting to Hodge. This was the last task of the day. Once the docket was signed, they could go and get absolutely hammered ... Unless Talia was there. If she was, he would see if she was up for some fun. His ball sacks were full to bursting. “So I said to her, ‘You ain’t seen nothing yet.’ And I flipped her over and, what the fuck is that!?” Shane had stopped pushing the crate and was looking out through the window of the umbilical. Hodge peered over his shoulder. In the distance it looked as though a space suit was caught between the two closed cargo bay doors. “I hope that there is no-one in that suit.”

“They are a bit fucked if there is.” They pushed the crate into the empty hold and made their way over to the hatch leading to the crew quarters. Hodge stabbed his finger on the call button. A young teen girl who looked anorexic to a point near death and who had sunken haunted eyes and a smashed nose, stood behind the hatch when it opened and wordlessly signed for the crate and shut the hatch in their faces.

“Man. Fuck being on the crew of this boat.” Shane shivered. “I really need that fucking drink now...”

With the transponder on board, there was no point in accruing dock fees. Varna disengaged the Anya and set off for the jump point, using the flight time to remove the packaging around the transponder and push it up to the bridge. Varna read the instructions again. She was really going to struggle to find the appropriate panel to slave into. She couldn’t afford refit dock fees to have an engineer fit it, but it looked as though she wasn’t going to have an option on the matter. The proximity alert sounded. She didn’t even bother sitting in the seat as she called up the part of space she thought most probable and set the Anya to jump there. Varna tried to eat more food but just couldn’t find the energy. She knew that she was in a vicious cycle, but didn’t have the energy to care. She lay down on her bunk and closed her eyes. She wasn’t unduly surprised to find a corresponding panel open in the wall of the bridge when she entered after awakening.

The Anya was running out of ways to surprise her.

She shrugged and kneeled down to connect the parts as per the diagram. She shoved the transponder up against the wall. She would glue or strap it down somehow later.

Calling up the ship functions, she found that the ship was indeed now broadcasting its name, yard of origin, owner (her), and dimensions as per space transit regulations. That meant she was good to go in major shipping and transit lanes.

Upon dropping back to real space, she set about scanning the surrounding vastness for any sign of her parents freighter. She found it on the third day of searching, micro jumping along all the possible routes her parents could have taken. As she drew closer, it looked in terrible condition. Damage most likely done by the girls that been the current playthings, as they had stripped the freighter of its valuable parts, whilst the crew had been busy having ‘fun’ with the new addition.

Varna forced her jaw to unclench, her fingernails to release from her palms, her shoulders to relax. As the Anya drew slowly closer, Varna moved to the space suit hung up near the hatchway to the outer dock. Another one of those ‘things’ that had appeared overnight. The ship was good at doing that, at some point when she had been asleep, the transponder had disappeared along with the open wall panel. A frantic search through the coms system had revealed that the transponder was still operational, from where-ever it now resided. She climbed inside the suit, which had an air and build quality of expense about it, and an almost military vibe. She wouldn’t have been surprised had there been a rifle racked alongside. Varna slid the visor shut, the HUD switching on, and stepped into the air lock, the hatch sliding shut behind without being commanded by her to do so.

The suit registered the declining level of atmosphere in the small room. It appeared that the suit was linked to the ships full systems, and she watched on her HUD as the Anya slowly moved to a halt relative to the Good Will, as she had originally pre-commanded into the ships navigation system.

When the outer hatch opened into space, she was greeted by a hovering entity her HUD was calmly informing her as being one of the Anya’s remotes. Handy. And on the subject of handy, there was a handle on the back of it. Varna clamped an armoured glove onto the handle and found herself being propelled away from her ship.