"Is there any way to regain control and turn the engines around?" Tasha wondered.
"I'm trying, I'm trying," Loki said. "This isn't Sleipnir, though. He's being controlled by some outside force that managed to hack into him and get such a solid foothold that I can't shake it. Someone must have been working for quite a while and very quietly for me to have not noticed this already."
"Where, precisely, is it taking us?" Anastasia asked.
"I won't know until we hit hyperspace," Loki said. "I can't get back into the controls!"
"Shit," Tasha muttered. "And Boston and Hui are still on board, too. We promised to keep them safe, and this was not what they'd signed up for."
"I doubt there was anything you could have done to prevent this that I could not have, and it entirely slipped beneath my perception. There must be an AI behind this, and a very good one."
"Wake up Jannika and get her up here," Tasha said, slumping into one of the chairs.
"Ugh, even the internal comm systems are down," Loki said. "At least the doors aren't being controlled, nor the replicators or lights."
"I will go and get her," Anastasia offered. She leaned down to give Tasha a reassuring peck on the forehead and headed out of the bridge.
Tasha rubbed her eyes, and stared off at the screen showing them flying out from Pandora's atmosphere and into space. Just when she had thought things were going more or less well, things started spiraling radically out of control. She didn't like the feeling of not being in control.
The doors slid open again and Jannika and Anastasia stepped onto the bridge. "What in Tyr's good hand is going on here?" Jannika demanded, striding onto the bridge and up toward the front consoles.
"I believe an external AI has taken control of the ship," Loki said. "And it's taking us away from planet Pandora for whatever reason. Once we reach hyperspace, I may be able to figure out where."
"Great," Jannika muttered. "Just bloody peachy."
The image on the viewscreen seemed to split for a moment, and space around them warped and opened up to swallow the ship whole into hyperspace. The shining brilliance of the other side filled the view, blinding and numbing.
"If this trajectory is correct, we're heading for Tanaka Station," Loki said.
"Where is that?" Tasha asked. "What's there?"
"Twenty-six lightyears from planet Pandora," Loki said, bringing diagrams and images of it on his screen. "A small station, only a handful of personnel. It's the personal home of Dr. Susan Tanaka, an expert in the field of artificial intelligence."
"Well, that would explain how something managed to take over the ship," Jannika said dryly. "But why would anyone want to? Why us?"
"She must have found out about Sleipnir," Tasha said. "Or our technology. But how? I doubt Peon would have said anything, and we were careful not to let the Pandorans know about it. The only person who isn't on this bridge right now who knows about it is..."
"Melissa," Anastasia finished.
"Helvíti," Jannika uttered. "We'd realized she was hiding something, but I didn't think it was something like this. The whole business with that agent entirely threw me."
"She found the agent," Tasha said. "She's downstairs with her now."
"Well, that might be why this Susan Tanaka decided to strike now," Jannika said. "If they'd wanted this agent out of the way first. And I suppose there's no way to get control of the ship back, either."
"I've been trying, but no luck," Loki said. "The AI involved is much stronger than me. Moira is her name. I can't get much information about her, though."
"Keep trying," Tasha said.
"Please keep trying to get through to Sleipnir," Anastasia said. "I can only imagine that this was primarily possible due to the fact that he is not yet fully sentient."
"You'd be correct," Loki said. "It's damned near impossible to really take over the core functions of a fully sentient AI."
"In the meantime," Jannika said. "Why don't we go have a little chat with our friend Melissa, then?"
She strode purposefully toward the doors, leaving Tasha and Anastasia to follow in her wake as she climbed down the stairs and entered the crew quarters. Jannika didn't even bother to knock or ring, simply opening the door, to reveal Tharpie strung up, naked and gagged, looking slightly worse for wear. Melissa was standing over her with a riding crop in hand.
"I need to quit doing that," Jannika muttered.
"I was just getting warmed up," Melissa told her brightly. "Did you girls want to watch the festivities?"
"No, Melissa," Jannika said. "We just wanted to have a little chat. Primarily about the fact that the ship is no longer under our control and we're heading for Tanaka Station."
"Oh, that," Melissa said, smirking. "Don't worry too much about it. If my employer had wanted you girls dead, you'd already be."
"We figured as much," Tasha said dryly.
"Maybe you could enlighten us as to what she does want, then," Jannika said. "Though I can guess."
"If you're guessing what I think you're probably guessing, then your guessing is probably correct," Melissa said. "She already knew you girls had some interesting technology even before she assigned me to come aboard. You weren't exactly particularly subtle in your flight plan. In fact, if it hadn't been for her and Moira's help, the lot of you would probably have been in even deeper trouble. She helped to keep the authorities off your backs, you know. Despite your own best efforts at getting yourselves arrested, anyway."
"She's been helping us?" Jannika repeated, raising an eyebrow. "And is there any particular reason why she didn't just, you know, ask?"
Melissa smirked. "You know as well as I do that you'd not so readily give it up just like that, so don't even bother pretending that you might have had you been asked. If you were going to, you'd have tried to see how much money you could get for it out of Pandora Corp."
"You realize that Boston and Hui are still aboard," Tasha said.
"That's not my concern. Dr. Tanaka doesn't much care about the crew, though she might just offer them, and you, employment opportunities," Melissa said.
"I'm not interested in any employment opportunities from the likes of someone who does things like this," Jannika said.
"Hey, don't knock it. The pay's good, there's plenty of side benefits, and I seriously doubt she'd be planning on letting you go with what you know anyway."
"Well, we'll be there in two days," Jannika said. "If there's anything else you'd care to come clean on, feel free to do so. Because I really don't care anymore." Jannika spun on her heel and headed back to the ladder.
Melissa smirked at Tasha once Jannika was gone, and said, "When people say things like that, they do, they really do."
"Probably," Tasha said. "Have fun." She turned and closed the door, and headed out along with Anastasia back upstairs.
The three of them gathered up in the mess hall and replicated some food for Jannika and Anastasia, which they sat down to eat half-heartedly. Tasha slouched down in a chair and stared off, wondering just what in the world they were going to do about all this, and figuring that the other two were probably thinking about the same thing.
"Well, we've been caught up nicely in this little thing," Tasha said. "Recriminating ourselves about that we should have been more cautious is probably a moot point by this point, but really, what more could we have done? We were screwed the minute the cops showed up at the Kai house."
"We could have attempted to be more patient and have earned the money legitimately and actually bought the supplies rather than stealing them?" Anastasia suggested.
"That might have taken years," Jannika said.
"Right, we're all young and impulsive, and more than a little impatient at times," Tasha said. "But sometimes you have to bring things into perspective. What would the passing of years matter if you're going to live forever anyway? I've certainly no intention of letting either of you die if I can possibly help it. And here we've put ourselves in danger being reckless about this all."
"Patience can be a scarce thing when you're twenty-something," Jannika commented wryly.
"We should be spending those years learning and growing more skilled and experienced," Tasha said. "Not flying off on some wild chase for the sake of survival and almost getting ourselves killed on more than one occasion."
Anastasia raised her hand to still Tasha's tirade for the moment. "There is one point that you are not considering, Tasha. Pandora Corp. They have already begun work on their gateway. This is a time-sensitive issue. There will, indeed, be time to attempt to find a stretch of peace and quiet in order to learn, and to earn our place in the multiverse, but at the moment, we have a gateway looming over our heads and we cannot leave this universe until we have that warp coil. Neither do we know what, precisely, might happen or come out of it should Pandora successfully complete this project."
"Alright, you have a point," Tasha said. "Of course, it leads back to the point that we wouldn't have required a new warp coil in the first place if I had spent more time learning to fly a damned ship rather than waste my time on pointless pursuits, but that's neither here nor there at the moment."
Jannika popped the last bit of chicken into her mouth and said, "Alright, enough of this. I'm going to the bridge and see if I can manage to come up with some information and maybe some sort of plan to get us out of this. And you know, if working for Susan Tanaka is the best thing we can come up with, at this point, it might well be safer and more sane to just do it rather than try to fight it. There's all the time in the universe to escape, as Tasha says. I think we all could stand to learn a little patience at this point, I suppose."
She headed out the door to the bridge, leaving the other two alone in the mess hall. After a few minutes, Melissa strolled into the mess hall and over to the replicator after dropping a wad of slightly bloody tissue into the recycler. Tasha glanced over at her and raised an eyebrow, absently wondering if she should even try to think about just what the woman was up to down there. What a waste of perfectly good blood, too. After replicating herself a bowl of tortilla chips and some salsa, she sat down at the table with them.
"Want some?" Melissa offered generously, waving her hand at the snacks.
"No, thank you," Tasha said. Anastasia, however, eagerly reached for some.
"You know, it's funny," Melissa said, munching on a tortilla chip. "In all the time I've been travelling with you girls, I don't think I've ever actually seen you eat, Tasha."
"I'd really rather not," Tasha said, her heart sinking. This was not a line of questioning she particularly cared to get into at the moment.
"Do you even have a stomach, or do you just plug yourself into the wall to recharge every now and then?" Melissa wondered.
"Something along those lines," Tasha replied. All the better if Melissa thought she was a cyborg of some sort. The truth was far too dangerous.
"I have to wonder just how good your design really is," Melissa said. "Where do you stack up against me?"
"I'm a lover, not a fighter," Tasha said with a smirk. "You'd still kick my ass."
"Why don't we find out?" Melissa stood up and headed around the table. "See how far your highly advanced technology really takes you."
"I'd really rather not..." Tasha began, but Melissa was already upon her, pulling her out of her seat. Anastasia grabbed the bowl of chips and carried it off safely out of harm's way.
Melissa was strong and quick, but more importantly she knew her way around a fight. Tasha struggled against her, not particularly wanting to fight or to hurt Melissa, but not really seeing any way around it at this point. She tried to squirm free of her, to pin her down or otherwise disable her, but the woman was just as fast as she was and probably even stronger.
"Melissa, let go," Tasha said through clenched teeth. "Leave me alone!"
Melissa, however, was relentless and not willing to back off for even a moment. There was no real malice in her eyes, rather a somewhat sadistic grin of merely enjoying the fight itself. Tasha was no real fighter, but she felt the fight stirring in her, and she snarled back at her. Melissa was hurting her, and on the verge of breaking something. Any mortal would have wound up severely bruised after a fight like this, and sore for a week or more.
"Come on, fight back, I know you've got it in you," Melissa said, redoubling her efforts tirelessly.
"Leave me alone!" Tasha growled, viciously lashing out at her.
Unable to help herself, Tasha extended her fangs and plunged them into Melissa's wrist, eagerly drinking of the other's sweet blood. Reason might try to tell her she shouldn't be doing this, but at the moment, reason was a distant, quiet voice in her mind. Melissa stopped struggling at that, and by the time Tasha got control of herself again and pulled herself away, she realized that she had drunk more blood than a normal human could survive losing at one time. Damn it, she hadn't intended to kill the woman, no matter how unhappy they'd been with her at the moment. In alarm, she checked and saw that Melissa was still actually conscious, and had started chuckling softly. Either not that badly hurt, or worse than she had thought.
"That, I was not expecting," Melissa said.
"Melissa, are you alright?" Tasha asked in concern.
"I'm fine, I'm fine," Melissa assured her. "I am a cyborg, if you haven't noticed that by now. I'd need to lose a lot more blood than that to be in serious trouble." She climbed to her feet again and brushed herself off. Anastasia brought the chips back to the table and sat them down again, and Melissa took one and scooped up a good helping of salsa and started munching on it. "So, tell me, then. Just what exactly are you?"
"I'm a vampire," Tasha admitted, slumping down into one of the seats across from them.
"So I gathered," Melissa said. "Bit more details, please? Did you universe genetically engineer people resembling the vampires of legend, or is it accomplished with cybernetic implants, or are you really not human and just some bloodsucking humanoid that happens to resemble humans, or are you literally a vampire like out of legends?"
"The latter," Tasha said with a smirk. "I was born human, got turned into a vampire a few years ago, and now I have a severe sun allergy and a liquid diet. I was trying to avoid too many people finding out about it, for reasons that should probably be pretty obvious."
Melissa chuckled softly. "I can imagine... even moreso than trying to keep your technology quiet, and you've succeeded a good deal more with this."
"How the hell did I manage to beat you, anyway?"
"That bit just kind of took me by surprise," Melissa said. "You're pretty damned quick, too. You don't seem to have the amazing super strength and powers and such of the old legendary vampires, either."
"I'm not a very old vampire," Tasha replied. "All that would have come with time and learning, but right here and right now, I don't really have any other vampires around to learn from, either. So I'm just kind of left with making my own way and using what I've already learned and doing what comes instintually. Not to mention that there's plenty I could yet learn that isn't a strictly vampiric power."
"You just haven't gotten around to learning most of them yet," Melissa pointed out.
"Well, yeah," Tasha said. "I've been a bit busy spending most of my time running from one thing or another because I have no hope in hell of being able to fight it and survive."
"I'd think that's when you'd be working to train the most, rather than lounging about the ship and wasting time."
Tasha smirked broadly. "Fine, you have something of a point there," she admitted. "Not, mind you, that I likely have any hope in hell against your employer, either."
"Tsk," Melissa said, shaking her head. "You doom yourself before you even begin by assuming any effort would end in failure. Look, Tanaka's smart, yes, and she's got a lot of resources on her side, but at the base of it all, she's just human. Just an ordinary, unmodified human. She's not anything special, and she's not even a psychic or anything."
"Why are you telling us this?" Tasha wondered, raising an eyebrow.
"Just making a point," Melissa said lightly, smiling. "I wouldn't dream of betraying my employer, after all. That's just bad for business, you know?"
"Yeah, because if you had, we wouldn't be in this predicament."
"A contract is a contract," Melissa said. "That doesn't mean I might not enjoy watching should things become interesting."
"You don't like her overmuch, do you," Tasha said dryly.
"I wouldn't dare speak any ill word about my employer while still working for her," Melissa said, shaking her head. "We'll see what comes out of it and who really winds up on top. Personally, I don't think you folks stand a chance in hell against her and you'd do best to just surrender and do whatever she wants you to. Unless you can get your act together and figure out what you're doing, she will pound you into the ground."
"I'm sure," Tasha said.
"Oh, and now she'll know about the vampire bit, too. I'm sure she will be most interested in learning all she can about that."
"Great," Tasha muttered. "Right, any chance I could pay you to keep quiet about that?" She smirked.
"Sorry, one contract at a time," Melissa said brightly. "And I've seen your finances. You have no chance of outbidding Tanaka either."
"So what would you suggest we do, then?" Tasha said.
"Just curl up and roll over," Melissa said. "I'm sure Tanaka will be merciful. She's never one for carelessly killing someone who might still be useful to her, after all."
"Thanks," Tasha said dryly.
Melissa munched down on the last of the chips and shoved the remaining bit of salsa into the recycler. She stepped over to the replicator and began poking through its database a bit, and called up a number of interesting objects with purposes Tasha did not particularly care to think too closely about. With those in hand, she headed off back down to the crew quarters again.
"I am so fucked," Tasha muttered quietly at Anastasia once she'd gone.
"Perhaps we should take her up on her advice," Anastasia suggested. "The advice which she did not explicitly state, that is. I get the impression that she does not particularly like her present employer, but she would not dare act directly against her."
"We'll be there in less than two days," Tasha said. "What could we possibly teach ourselves in that time?"
"You would be surprised at what the human mind is capable of when properly motivated," Anastasia said.