Bored in deep space - Novelisation -
Chapter 26 - Emerald Sky Marauders (5)
I could sit here all day coming up with theories, but ultimately it wouldn't get us closer to solving the actual mystery. Every guess, no matter how logical, was a shadow dance in the dark. The real answers were with the men in the grainy cantina footage from three years ago, and one of them was sitting at the other end of this cafe. Why stand in the audience when I could just walk right onto the stage?
From across the cafe, I watched as their conversation reached its natural conclusion. Riker gestured towards his empty cup with an air of resignation. He said something that made Van smirk, a genuine expression of amused disdain. With one last, assessing glance around the room, Van rose from her seat. Her movements were fluid, practiced, and devoid of wasted energy. Without a backwards glance at Riker, she walked towards the entrance, a black-clad spectre melting into the station's stream of transient beings.
Riker remained at the table for a few extra minutes. He stared into the bottom of his own cup as if searching for a lost treasure. Then, with a practiced sigh, he reached into a pocket on his jumpsuit and produced a small, unadorned datapad. The screen glimmered to life. He put the datapad up to his ears, an old-fashioned gesture, but effective for hushed conversation. It was a call. His voice was a low, clipped whisper, just barely audible through the comm-link Tama provided.
"What?" he barked. Then a pause. "No, I'm done here, I'm heading over now… Vorn, keep him there… I don't care, just keep him contained. Tell him to stick his damn head into a coolant tank if he has to… Fine. I'll be there soon."
With a final, sharp tap of his finger, the call ended. Riker's jaw tightened as he pocketed the datapad and pushed himself to his feet.
With the show over, I turned my head towards Tama. "You got a lock on that? We're going to go pay them a visit."
Tama's composed features hardened. She didn't respond immediately, taking precisely three seconds to process my request, a tell-tale sign of her internal debate on the prudence of my actions. "Captain, I must strongly advise against a direct confrontation. This represents an unnecessary and potentially hazardous escalation, with a minimal probability of obtaining viable intelligence. That location is known Marauder territory, a place actively avoided by the Port Authorities. An encounter would not result in a diplomatic discussion; it would be a violent engagement."
I leaned forward. Tama was still treating me like a precious egg, one she had to use all means to ensure wasn't harmed. I tapped a finger lightly on the polished obsidian table. "Are you getting nervous, Tama?" I teased, my tone light and cutting. "Is the living artifact, the last echo or a million years of forgotten history, worried a couple of two-bit pirate goons might rough us up?"
My smirk widened as my fingers instinctively went to the silver clip on my tie, its cool, unnaturally smooth surface a familiar comfort. "You're right, the last time I took them on, I lost. Badly," I admitted quietly. "But that was a different Noah. And I wasn't wearing this." I looked at her dead in the eye, a strange, unshakable confidence swelling in my chest. The kind of confidence you have when going into the final exams with a full cheat sheet in front of you. The kind of confidence you get when you're facing off against your superior knowing the CEO has your back. The clip was a literal piece of god-tech, a get-out-of-jail-free card. "We have every advantage here, Tama. It's about time we started acting like it."
For an infinitesimal fraction of a second, a genuine flash of irritation crossed Tama's otherwise perfect, deadpan features. Her brow furrowed. Her lips tightened. A very brief, phantom scowl. It was like watching a statue express anger. And then it was gone. "Captain," she began, her tone losing its gentle cautionary tone, shifting instead to the cold, resonant finality of a superintelligence outlining an unavoidable outcome. "Even if the entirety of the Marauders' armada were to mount a full-scale invasion of this station, I am ninety-nine-point-eight percent confident in my ability to obliterate their entire operation. For instance—"
Oh, here we go again.
"I would begin by executing a pinpoint micro-blink of their primary power conduits on their command carrier, simultaneously frying every combat system and life-support circuit while leaving their civilian quarters intact," she began, her words a rapid-fire cascade of terrifyingly precise methodology. "Then, I would commandeer the station's own, rudimentary defense grid, recalibrating its algorithms to target Marauder vessels while spoofing their IFF transponders to broadcast themselves as Port Authority ships. Using the Marauders' own attack patterns against them, I could—"
I raised a hand, cutting her off. The sheer force of her tactical breakdown felt like a tidal wave of lethal information. "Okay, okay, I get it," I laughed. "See, that's more like it. You're the Last Star of Astellion, the progeny and the echo of a millions-of-year-old machine race." I leaned back, but not before she fully understood her place in this universe and the weight of her own destiny. We had the firepower. We had the processing power of a superintelligence the likes of which mere pirates would never even come close to comprehending. What were we waiting for? I pointed a finger at her like I was giving a presentation at a business meeting. "Pushing the advantage," I said with a firm nod. "That's the key."
A flicker of understanding passed through Tama's eyes.
"It's a core concept from my favourite strategy game, Stellar Hegemony," I explained. "When you have superior tech, superior firepower, and an informational advantage, you don't send a polite envoy to ask nicely. You appear over their Homeworld with a fleet of god ships, park it in high orbit, and tell them the game has changed. You force them to the negotiating table on your terms, and you don't let them leave until they've made the concessions you want. We're not here to play in the mud with these guys. We're here to break the rules they all live by."
For a long, stretching minute, Tama remained silent. Her eyes began to glow, their orange light brightening, intensifying, as if a million ghostly processors were firing in sequence, analysing the new philosophical input. I had, I realised, just presented her not with a strategy, but with an entirely new, almost heretical, form of logic. Not one based on cold data and risk analysis, but on the brutal, human-centric drive for dominance.
It was like teaching a calculator what it meant to be angry.
Then, as the luminous glow in her eyes slowly subsided back to their normal, burnished warmth, a tiny, near imperceptible smile tugged at the corners of her lips. For the briefest of moments, it seemed less like a conscious expression and more like a glitch, a beautiful, human flicker in her perfect god code.
"Upon further contemplation," she stated, her smooth alto returning. "I find that I… enjoy the sound of that." Another micro smile. "I like the prospect of lording over arrogant pirates with vastly superior technology and overwhelming firepower."
I felt a jolt of adrenaline, the thrill of a shared, dangerous ambition. "See?" I laughed. "You're picking it up already. The old machines would be so proud." The thought hung in the air between us, heavy with irony. After all, that's exactly what they did to us. They'd appeared, overwhelming in their power, and forced us -- me and Calliope -- to their terms. There was also that small, biting thought at the back of mind, that I might be making a mistake here -- that in maybe 10 million years Tama will take my advice to heart and start a genocidal, tyrannical, god-machine campaign… but that was way in the future. I'm sure it'd be fine.
"Your tactical reasoning, though derived from an archaic simulation, is… sound, Captain. The target location is Hangar Bay B-93. Prepare yourself.".
.
.
.
Hangar Bay B-93 was a wound. The moment we stepped through the reinforced sliding door, the air itself told the story. It was thick, stale, and heavy with the metallic tang of ozone and the coppery, nauseating scent of dried blood. The lighting was a joke, a few grime-covered strips hanging from the high ceiling that cast deep, shifting shadows across a vast, empty space. The entire bulkhead was pockmarked with black scorch marks and jagged, angry-looking holes where projectiles had taken through the plating. In the centre of the bay, under the glow of a single, flickering maintenance lamp, lay a man.
He was face-up, one arm flung out at an unnatural angle, his expensive jacket stained a deep, dark red around a single, neat hole in the centre of his chest.
Across from him, two figures stood like statues over their handiwork. I recognised Vorn instantly. The huge, bald brute looked even larger and more menacing than he did in the security footage. Next to him, Riker stood tensed, his lean frame coiled like a spring, a look of sheer, incredulous fury on his face.
"What in the name of the Void were you thinking, Vorn?" Riker's voice was a low, venomous hiss, carrying an edge of barely restrained panic. "The one loose thread we had to follow. The one accountant with the information. And you turn him into a corpse."
Vorn, however, seemed completely unfazed by the recrimination. He simply shrugged. "He got stupid, Joric. Lunged at me. Pulled a knife. I just helped him commit suicide a little faster than he planned. You want me to, what? Let him stick me?"
"You weren't supposed to touch him! You were supposed to lean on him. Scare him. Get a name! Not create a body the Port Authorities are going to find in ten cycles!" Riker rounded on him, his hand gesturing wildly towards the corpse. "You idiot! You've ruined months of work!"
I decided a theatrical entrance was in order. From the deep shadows near the hangar door, a slow, deliberate series of claps echoed through the cavernous space.
Clap.
Clap.
Clap.
It was a small, contemptuous sound, yet it cut through their argument like a stun blast. Both men spun around, their faces twisting in surprise and aggression, their hands moving instinctively to the holstered pistols at their sides.
Vorn saw me first. "Get lost before you end up like this idiot," he gestured with his chin towards the body on the floor. "And you saw nothing."
Riker's gaze was sharper, more analytical, darting from me to the silent figure trailing in my wake. Tama moved with an unnerving grace, her bodyguard posture a silent white silhouette of lethal potential, her eyes burning with an unsettling orange fire.
"Gentlemen," I said, stepping further into the light, a cheerful, mocking smile plastered on my face. "I hope I'm not interrupting anything important. A negotiation, was it? Or a post-mortem performance review?" I gave the deed body on the floor a thoughtful glance. "I've been there myself. Negotiations, I mean. Never with this much paperwork at the end, though."
Recognition didn't dawn on them. It was clear we were utter strangers. Just two more problems in a day full of them.
"Who the hell are you?" Riker snarled, his instincts taking over. Both men drew their pistols, a pair of heavy, utilitarian slugthrowers that glinted dully in the weak light. They raised them, aiming not at my centre of mass, but precisely at my head. These men were used to violence and murder.
They didn't even have time to tighten their fingers on the triggers.
Tama moved. There was no blur of motion, no wasted gesture. She simply raised a single, delicate hand and gave a dismissive, almost lazy wave. The pistols flew out of their grasps as if struck by invisible hammers. They spun through the air and clattered across the grimy floor, coming to a rest a dozen metres away.
Before either man could process the disarmament, Tama's gesture inverted. Her other hand, palm down, made a sharp, decisive movement towards the floor. The very air around Vorn and Riker seemed to thicken, to grow solid. I saw a shimmer, like a heat wave bending light around them. An immense, crushing force slammed both to their knees, then drove them flat onto their stomachs. Their faces hit the deck with a wet smack. I watched as Vorn's muscles bunched, veins standing out on his neck and forehead, straining against the immense pressure pinning him, but he couldn't move an inch. It was as if an entire cargo container had materialised directly on top of them.
"Frigging… bitch! Void-damned… witch!" Vorn roared from his prone position, the words muffled by the deck plates as he thrashed uselessly, more from impotent rage than any real attempt to escape.
Riker, however, was smarter. He grunted as the force pressed the air from his lungs, but forced himself to speak, craning his head as much as he could to look at Tama. His one good eye was wide with a terrifying kind of understanding. "A psychic!" he rasped. "What… what do you want?!" His voice stammered, there was a clear sense of realisation that he was out of his depths.
I ignored him, my attention utterly captured by Tama. I hadn't even considered the possibility. "Huh…" I said, my voice full of genuine awe. "I had no idea you were a psychic. Were you holding out on me?" I asked casually while the men were still being pinned by some unimaginably heavy force. After all, it wasn't like I was in any rush, and backup for them wouldn't arrive any time soon either. A little private Q&A couldn't hurt.
Her focus never wavered from the two men pinned beneath her invisible weight. "I am not psychic, Captain," she stated calmly, a hint of what I could almost swear was academic derision in her tone. "That is a brutish, imprecise application of latent biological energy. What you are witnessing is a simple but hyper-specialised application of photon solidification."
"You mean the light thing you did with the ship?"
"Correct," she returned a small nod. "Only instead of creating a stationary mass from coherent light, I am generating infinitesimally small, highly-dense, and rapid recalibrated fragments that apply localised gravitational pressure upon my target." Her orange eyes remained locked on her victims. "In essence, I am holding them down with a constantly-shifting cushion of heavy photons."
I'd be lying if I said I knew what she was talking about, but I got the general gist of it. She made light physical, then pinned that light down onto the two men. "Right, of course. So then, about psychics…" I said. The notion intrigued me, painting a vivid picture in my mind derived from years of fictional Earth media. "They're real, then? Not just stories they tell kids to get them to join the corporate security forces?"
"Psychokinesis," Tama clarified, "while scientifically acknowledged, is a rare biological anomaly. It is not magic, Captain. It is a recessive genetic trait, manifesting as a unique structure within the human prefrontal cortex colloquially known as a 'resonance lobe'. A biological function allowing individuals to generate and manipulate a form of psionic energy."
"Biological? So anyone could be one?"
"In theory, yes. In practice, no. It is a statistical fluke. Most identified psychics, approximately seventy percent, possess Epsilon-level talent -- modest telekinesis, useful for specialised labour or small-scale criminal facilitation. At the apex are the rare Beta and Alpha-level psychics -- living legends capable of shattering steel or manipulating local gravity. These individuals are highly-sought after and usually have very short lives as they are the ultimate assets for the Great Houses and corporate black ops divisions."
I looked back down at the spy pinned to the floor. "So, he called you a psychic, but really, what you're doing is something he can't even begin to comprehend."
"Correct."
"Well, there's an entire series of questions I want to ask once we're back on the ship," I said.
"I am willing to indulge you for as long as you want."
I took a deliberate step forward, my boots squeaking softly on the grimy deck plates. It was an unhurried, casual saunter, like a supervisor on a coffee break walking the factory floor. I stopped between the two men and crouched down, resting my forearms on my knees, staring down at them. They were pinned, breathing heavily, faces mashed into the dirty floor.
"I'm not usually one for introductions, but I feel like we got off on the wrong foot," I said, my tone conversational. I looked at Riker's cybernetic eye, and then at the coiled snake tattoo on Vorn's thick, sweating neck. "Though, I guess three years is a long time. Maybe you don't remember me."
Both men grunted, their replies lost in the metallic groan of their strained muscles against the floor. Vorn's expression was one of pure, befuddled rage. Riker, however, had the look of a man rapidly calculating an equation with far too many unknown variables. His gaze darted from my face to Tama's unmoving form, then back, his cybernetic eye trying its best to scan us for any semblance of familiarity.
"Port Geranium. Catina. Sector B-3. 887 STC." I recited the entire footage timestamp and location for their benefit, but of course it flew right over their heads. "You two boys roughed up a guy in a nice suit. Looked an awful lot like me," I said, watching closely for any flicker of recognition. There was nothing. Only the strained, frustrated breathing of a captive and the grinding of teeth. Vorn's face was a blank wall of confused fury. Riker simply stared, the hamster wheel in his head turning furiously. It wasn't unexpected; a single, unremarkable bar fight on a station like this was probably as memorable to them as stepping on a bug.
"Listen man, if you're here for revenge, we seriously don't—"
As Riker was about to make his case, I cut him off. "Nah," I shook my head, a small mocking chuckle bubbling from my throat. "Nah man, Like I said, I'm not here for revenge. Just answers. Because a bar fight? Yeah, sure that happens all the time, I get it. But jamming someone's Fold Drive so they disappear halfway through space? Now that's a completely different story." At this point the cordial and personable smile I was wearing disappeared. I leaned closer to Riker, my voice dropping to a near-whisper. "Answers, Joric. One of you is going to give them to me. We can start simple and work our way up."
"Their operational knowledge will be limited, Captain," Tama's smooth alto cut in. "Vorn here is likely a blunt instrument. His orders are given, not debated. And Joric," she stressed the alias with a hint of disdain, "knows only what is necessary to maintain his cover. Their direct superiors, however, especially within the Emerald Sky Marauder command structure, would be a far more valuable intelligence source."
"Excellent point," I nodded in agreement. My gaze shifted, drifting between the two men, evaluating. The spy was the more logical choice; smart, more likely to know things. But the smart ones are also the most guarded, the best at lying. The brutes, on the other hand… they have needs, simple and predictable ones. Ambition. Greed. And an aching stupidity that can be easily manipulated.
I ignored Riker's calculating gaze and turned my full attention to the hulking figure that was Vorn. "Listen to me, Vorn."
He grunted something unintelligible, still trying, and failing, to push against the heavy photons pressing him to the floor.
I decided against a threat. There wasn't a need to. A display of power was pointless when the woman standing over him had already made the ultimate statement. Instead, I delved deep, pulling out a persona I hadn't used in years, a ghost from a life on another planet. A corporate project manager. "How would you like a promotion?" I asked.
Vorn's struggle ceased for a fraction of a second, replaced by utter confusion. "What the hell are you talking about? Witch-lover!" he spat, his words muffled by the floor. "A promotion? You're just some corporate scum with a pet freak! Let me up and I'll peel the skin off your face!"
My eye shifted briefly over to Riker, who was watching Vorn with a look of profound, almost philosophical annoyance. Then I refocused my attention back to Vorn, my smile returning. I was the kind manager giving a perpetually under-performing but loyal employee a chance. "Your partner over there…" I said, gesturing with my face at Riker. "He's not exactly who he says he is. See, I have it on very good authority that the only thing he's loyal to is a rival outfit."
"Bullshit!" Riker's head snapped towards me, an involuntary motion that was cut short by the floor. "Don't listen to him!" he shouted, his formerly sharp, controlled tone finally cracking into raw desperation. "He's playing you, Vorn! Trying to confuse you! He's got nothing!"
"Easy there, Joric," I chided without looking at him. "Oh, but that's not your real name, is it?" I said, then looked Riker dead in the eyes. The cybernetic plate covering his face gave me nothing, but the panic in his real eye was a dead giveaway. "RikerRaelus. Isn't that better? Sounds like a real name, not some street trash gamer tag."
"... How?" For a second, all the blood drained out of Riker's face. The word was little more than a strangled whisper.
I just gave him a lazy, dismissive shrug. "I have my sources. But right now, you're not the priority, Riker. My conversation is with Mr. Henricks here."
I turned back to the hulking man. He was frozen now, not from exhaustion, but from a terrifying suspicion. A slow realisation of betrayal. His eyes, wide and piggy, stared from Riker's back to my face. "Joric…?" he gasped.
"Vorn," I clicked my fingers in his face. "Focus. You work for the Emerald Sky Marauders. That's Red. That's simple. But him?" I jerked a thumb towards the spy. "He works for the Abyssal Cravens. Black. They've been trying to dismantle you from the inside out for years. And he's been the key. That's what's happening here, Vorn. And you're the lock they're trying to pick."
Vorn said nothing. But I could see the cogs turning, slowly, painfully. There must've been some level of suspicion from the start, otherwise why would you believe some random stranger that comes out of nowhere and tells you your partner's a traitor? Vorn's an idiot, but maybe he heard something from his superiors. Or maybe it was a gut feeling. These types seem to operate more on feelings and intuition than logic. "So, here's the deal," I continued, my tone returning to that of a slick, middle manager closing a difficult deal. "Your superiors, the real ones, would be very interested to know about this little rat, wouldn't they? He's not just a spy. It's a betrayal of the highest order." I leaned a little closer. "Think of the rewards."
I stood up, towering over him, a benevolent figure of shadow and light. "You get me a direct meeting with your boss. Someone important. And you can tell them you uncovered a rat. You get me closer to the snake, I give you the credit. That's a promotion. A big one." I paused. "You'd be a hero."
Vorn stared up at me from the floor. The rage in his eyes had cooled, replaced by a greedy, glimmering fire. The ambition of a lesser man, a creature born to follow now offered the chance to lead, to claim victory that wasn't even his. For a dull creature like him, who understood little of tactics and less of loyalty, this wasn't about logic. It was about the simple, animalistic desire for a bigger scrap, a bigger prize. A hero.