Chapter 6: The Bitch Is Back

(Note: This chapter takes place shortly after Chapter 4 and 5, and takes place with a different point of view)

I would have sighed wistfully if I was in my body as I finished sending the message back to Alex and MARY’S DREAM. Of course, being in a HI-AI (Human Intelligence Artificial Interface), I didn’t really sigh, or ... well do much really. But in the electronic world? I was the freakin’ quantum ghost in the Machine, the fastest thing ever to hit the Alternet. I didn’t do much of my shenanigans any more, too much risk for the house. I could sigh in the digital world all I wanted. But every now and then, I was Contrary Mary, instead of the Good Ghost In the Machine and reading the note that Teresa was sending Alex made me decide to attach my own little message there too.

Why was I sighing? Because I had read that message from HER. No that wasn’t fair, I’m sure that Melissa is a nice person and we’d get together famously should we ever had met before some assholes decided that killing me and my family would be the best way for their part of the Family to gain prominence.

Actually, I shouldn’t call myself “THE” Ghost in the Machine. There are a few others like me. For those who couldn’t have a normal life due to illness or injury, a HI-AI interface was the only way we could interface with the world around us. As long as my body lived, I was fine in the Alternet. Afterwards, they thought they could keep me as a digital-only presence indefinitely, but I wasn’t so sure about that. It seemed to me like the real me would still be dead, and the digital interface would just be a copy of a mind that’s already gone to its Eternal Reward. Or Punishment.

There were many times that I didn’t mind my situation. When you take someone like me who was already a major computer geek and do away with all that messy physical stuff, so they worked solely in the digital world, you get a computer Goddess. I know, it sounds like I’m bragging. Actually, yeah, I’m bragging. I must get some joy out of this situation.

This however, was DEFINITELY not one of those times. Alex was in trouble, AGAIN, and I couldn’t help him here from Terra, the home of humanity, and worse yet, SHE was with him. Until she sent her mail to me, I was content to hate her with a passion, because she was not only where I had dreamed to be, but she was so beautiful, and that red hair, I would have KILLED someone for hair like that before my injury.

To think that ... no good House Spoiled Brat was not only sharing the ship with MY NAME ON IT, but probably fucking Alex every chance she got. I tell you, as a Ghost in the Machine, I’ve seen just about every variation of the sexual act, alone, with pairs, threesomes or moresomes that a human or a human-descendent could do, so I had a vivid imagination. And every time an image of HER and MY ALEX doing some version of the Interstellar Kama Sutra crossed my mind, the poisoned well of my feelings toward her grew a little deeper and darker.

However, that well of hatred dried up when she sent me that damned message. She wanted to be MY Sister? That she hadn’t done anything because she thought I had the first claim on Alex? She wanted to fulfill MY dream too? I didn’t get it. Why was she being so nice to me. Didn’t she understand that I should hate her ass because she was living my dream already.

I’ll tell you this, the weeks I spent while they tried to prevent me from tipping over the edge into complete catatonia, all I did was dream of being with Alex. It was a foolish schoolgirl’s dream, but it was ALL. I. HAD. LEFT.

You see, Alex didn’t know it then, or perhaps even know it now, I had raised a royal tantrum about being separated from Alex. Ever since we met, we had been inseparable. We even had many a sleep over, before I became too old for such things to be properly done with a BOY. So, I made my mother a deal. Alex would attend the same school I did, and if I still felt the same way when I reached my majority, we would have him formally adopted into the family. And then and only then could we discuss his future. And mine.

I remembered back to that trip ... The sudden Bang as a small explosive took out the ship’s main functions. It took out the ship’s AI, its sensors, and its weapons. We were dead in space. We tried sending a distress message, but the comm link was down as well ... another victim of the saboteurs on our ship.

Alex’s mom, Kristina confronted the saboteurs when they first came in, trying to protect the locked stateroom in which my mother and father hid. She was the first one they shot. My mother and father soon joined them. I don’t think they meant to shoot them so quick, after all, they needed to find the jumpgate key now that the AI was down. I remembered wanting nothing more than to kill them at that moment, but Alex kept me from rushing them. I remember crying silently as we hid in one of the storage bays. I was a broken little doll. Not that I blame myself, but Alex, while being more than a bit broken himself over his mother’s death, still had the active mind that I loved.

I remember saying “We’re all going to die...” and wanting nothing more than that at the moment. He wiped away the tears from my eye, with fingers already damp from his tears ... and he reminded me of the situation. “We ‘re not dead yet, but we gotta hide, Mary. They didn’t come on this ship for piracy or whatever. They’re after something specific and won’t let us go till they find it.”

He had calmed me down enough to let my brain kick in, and I half-remembered the mutineers yelling at each other about finding the jumpgate code key as they stormed the ship. All House ships can access jumpgates in two different ways. Either via command code, properly transmitted with all the right security codes from an authorized member of the House, or via a key, a backup method provided just in case there were no authorized users on board a ship. It would set off alarms that something was wrong, but the Houses rather understood that if there were no living members of the House on a House Trading Ship, then something had gone CLEARLY wrong.

So, if that other branch of House Donovan had pulled this off, not only would they have taken out a rival branch of the family, opening up new markets and taking control of my family’s holdings, but then they could earn the House’s favor by “recovering” the jumpgate key, thus saving our family’s jumpgate from no longer being under our exclusive control.

When I mentioned the key, down on Deck B’s cargo bay, I wanted to leave right then and there to get it. We probably would have run into the pirates after no more than five minutes. Alex saw the problem with that, and he came up with an idea. I would use my computer skills to try to access some of the remaining electronics on the ship to figure out what the status was, and he would use the vent system to make his way down to Deck B, and bring it back. He was barely small enough to fit in, and there was a good chance he was going to get stuck, but it was the most reasonable chance we had. It took the better part of two hours, and I had to hide more than once while they did manual sweeps of the ship, trying to find any survivors, but he returned, holding the gate key, while I had reenabled the cameras on the brig, and saw that several House retainers had been put there, including my mother’s armsmen.

Alex volunteered again to go and get them, but I told him that this wasn’t something he could do. The armsmen probably wouldn’t give a “commoner” boy like Alex the time of the day, even if he let them out. I however, was a full (if junior) member of House Donovan, and I could rally them, get them to the armory, and take back the ship and find out what had happened to my family.

Alex told me that it was a bad idea, that by now we were already overdue to arrive at the jumpgate, and they would be sending someone to see why we hadn’t shown up as scheduled. But I didn’t listen to him ... I guess I was too hyped up to do SOMETHING about the situation. But he was right, should I be caught with the jumpgate key, it would be checkmate for the saboteurs. They had the house member (me), they had the jumpgate key, they had everything they needed.

So, I asked the one question that hurt Alex Donovan more than anything in the world, as it turned out. “Alex, I love you. Do you love me?”

Well, the blush on his face spoke miles about his feelings. He felt embarrassed (what 11 year old boy wants to admit he’s in love with a GIIIIIIIRLLLL), but only said quietly “Yes, I do Mary.”

“Then here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to go rescue the armsmen, and try to take the ship back ... and you are going to be my ace in the hole. I want you to go back into the vent system with the key, and I want you to stay there until help comes.”

“NO! IT’S TOO DANGEROUS!”

I smiled through brave little girl tears “Alex, I love you. Please, do this for me. If I don’t make it and they end up shooting me, then the only thing that’s stopping them from getting what they want is you. I need YOU to do this, this is something only YOU can do. Please do this for me?”

He wanted to protest. He did protest. There’s nothing he wanted less than for me to go where he couldn’t protect me. But I was firm. I told him explicitly that even if I was captured, no matter what, he was NOT to come out of the vents until it was safe. So, he prepared to go back into the vent system, and I prepared to sneak my way down to the brig and release my family’s armsmen. He tried to protest one last time, but I put a finger to his lips to stop his protest and gave him a kiss. Not a kiss of passion (not that we really understood what it was at age 11 and 12), but a kiss of love. “Promise me Alex. Promise me that you’ll do this for me, no matter what happens?”

He nodded, trying not to cry, as he climbed back up to the vent and I tried to make my way to the brig. The pirates were getting more frustrated, and I used that to my advantage. If I moved quietly enough in the semi-darkness of the emergency lights, I could hear them stomping around the ship and cursing. They had obviously found the empty Jumpgate Key Container and knew that there were people still on the ship who opposed them, and if they were going to get away with it, they needed to find that key FAST.

With the help of a little data slate I had downloaded the ship schematics to, I made my way down, first to the armory, where I recovered a pulse disruptor and several stunners, and then down to the brig. The pirate guarding them was obviously not paying attention to the hallway, something I should have caught at the time. He went down to a shot from my pulse disruptor, and I remember opening the forcefield that kept our family armsmen in. I told them to follow me, and I would arm them, and we would be taking the ship back.

I was so hyper focused on being the pint size version of Kat Cartright, space ranger (who handled these situations at least 2 or three times a season on the holovids, that I didn’t catch the glances they shared. I led them to the weapons, and I told them to follow me. After about ten steps, I realized they weren’t following. I turned around, and those stunners I had just given them were pointed directly at me.

I screamed incoherently and frantically started pulling the trigger of my own gun, but there was way too many of them. I know I shot at least a couple of them, but sooner or later, I was going to dodge the wrong way into a stun bolt. It happened sooner than I wanted.

As it turns out, the armsmen that were left were all part of the scheme. They were being left to provide the story that pirates had taken the ship, slaughtered everyone and took the Jumpgate key. Since there would have been no recordings of what happened, their story would be THE story on what happened. They’d probably get drummed out of House Service (no one wants an armsman who let his protectees get killed), but with the amount that those traitorous assholes would pay them afterwards, they’d still live a life of luxury.