She didn't like what she was seeing. She wasn't sure she should be seeing it.
Marron reached for her coffee, but in the dim green light succeeded only in knocking it over. She rushed to mop it off the display panel. Luckily, there hadn't been much of it left. Trunks was extremely proud of this system setup, and had, to Pan and Marron's increasing irritation, been referring to it as his "baby". She dreaded the thought of damaging it. It seemed unscathed.
Around her, monitors hummed, emitting a ghostly glow. She supposed she should either turn on some lights or go to bed. Instead, she turned back to the screen.
They'd worked out fairly quickly who Goten seemed to be working for, but since then they'd hit nothing but roadblocks in trying to track him down. Boredom and frustration had set in. The sun around which the planet orbited had dipped below the horizon some 76 earth-hours ago and the longer the dark went on, the more pessimistic they felt.
Then Marron had had an idea. It had taken her ten days and all of their resources to inveigle her way into the company's systems. Now she was alone, in the middle of what passed for night on their ship, learning things she knew she would want to expunge from her brain afterwards.
They'd assumed, after gathering some information about the company he was running with, that he was not up to anything good. Prior to any of this, it had been the preferred theory of several people back home anyway — even if Goku couldn't countenance the idea of his son working some kind of mercenary gig, Vegeta had been clear that it was among the more likely possibilities for a young Saiyan man making his way alone in the universe.
It was the details that kept turning Marron's stomach over. Only yesterday, it seemed, he'd been part of a crew sent to raze a village on a small, technologically-backwards planet.
The report ended with:
Deaths: approx. 400
Surely that wasn't all down to him. There'd been a big task force. She clicked back. Yes, they'd sent thirty soldiers. He hadn't killed all of them. But he had probably killed some of them. She pushed the thought away.
Another report, a couple of weeks ago, described a lifeship taken over, its resources 'surrendered' to the soldiers upon request. The interaction had met with resistance. They appeared to have jettisoned a considerable number of people — families — into space as punishment.
Deaths: unknown, 800+
Marron shifted in her seat and looked closer at the code she knew was his. She clicked through. A picture appeared — Goten, but older than she knew him, his face strangely serious. She was glad to see his hair looked as wild as ever. The flicker of pleasure at this discovery died in her as she read the information beneath the photograph. He was approved for elimination missions, unrest (creating it or suppressing it, she wasn't sure), settlement reconstitution (whatever that meant), and transport protection. He was 'P-destroyer level' too, which she didn't understand at all.
But it was the next line that chilled her:
Targets neutralised: 384
She sat back. Three hundred and eighty four. The precision surprised her. Did that include everyone he'd killed? She thought about how many of the reports had hazy death tolls. It was probably the lower bound.
As if in a trance, she found herself closing down the reports one by one, saving no local copies. She could get into their system again, if she needed to, she told herself. Keeping information on your own drives was always an unnecessary security risk. And she didn't want the other two to see this, she added silently, in case they decided they weren't interested in putting up with any more hardship for the sake of someone who'd spent the last five years engaged in things beyond any of their worst imaginings. This would be a bad time for them to see this, when they might be swayed in the wrong direction by it.
When she slipped into bed, Pan stirred in the bunk across from her.
"Marron?" She asked, voice thick with sleep.
"Nothing to worry about," Marron said, but Pan had already drifted off again, and no answer came.
A week later, lying awake while the others slept, she realised she could potentially hack into his personal comms. Whether the system would accept the transmission or decode it intelligibly, she didn't know, but she could send it.
She sat in the cold chair in front of the monitors and listened. There was no sound but the wind rushing either side of the ship. The area had frequent sandstorms, which explained its smooth expanse, almost free of geological features — the whole landscape was sanded down to nothing.
A few taps brought up the program she needed. She began to work, carefully concealing the data within other, more benign-looking transmissions.
Link 45715242bi43agfa996. Chanel open. Session 1.
CAPCORP: Goten. It's Marron. Are you there?
She waited for a few hours before giving up and going to bed. She tried again the next night, and the next, and the one after that.
Link 45715242bi43agfa996. Chanel open. Session 2.
CAPCORP: I don't know whether you're there, Goten.
CAPCORP: But if you are, say something.
Link 45715242bi43agfa996. Chanel open. Session 3.
CAPCORP: We miss you. Everyone forgives you. We're sorry. Just come back.
Link 45715242bi43agfa996. Chanel open. Session 4.
CAPCORP: I'm talking to myself here, aren't I? This was wishful thinking.
CAPCORP: Sometimes I remember how it felt
CAPCORP: Maybe you are there but you don't care enough about us to reply
CAPCORP: Sometimes you make me so angry
Link 45715242bi43agfa996. Chanel open. Session 5.
CAPCORP: Goten, please
She stopped sending the messages. They were going into the ether, or he was ignoring them, and she wasn't sure which was worse.
Marron heard Pan's shout of triumph and an accompanying thud as she passed the training room, her arms around a bag of salts for the water purification system. She backed up to look through the open door. No increased gravity today.
Trunks was on the ground, laughing, but rubbing his head.
"Was that a feint?" He asked, incredulous. "Did you just feint me?"
Pan was shifting from foot to foot in excitement. "You've trained that left-side opening out of me, but I've been waiting for the moment to strategically bring it back. I knew you'd think I'd reverted and I'd get a split-second chance as your guard went down."
Trunks beamed.
"Good job," Marron said.
Pan took a bow.
One of the computers in the control room was beeping continuously.
"Something wants our attention." Marron gave a little eye roll, and left to check on it.
She was back moments later, face flushed.
"You're going to want to look at this," she told them. "We have coordinates, but we'll need to move fast."
Pan and Trunks had left on a shuttle. It would take them a day and a half to get where they needed to go, some indeterminate amount of time to find Goten, and then a day and a half to return — hopefully with him in tow, though who knew how likely that was. A week in total.
Marron had seen them off two days ago. She'd given them the location details, some rough sense of what they were likely to find when they got there, and not much more. She had glossed over the gorier details. They still knew nothing of the mission records she'd seen. Three hundred and eighty-four.
She realised she was silently mouthing the number to the empty control room.
She had volunteered to stay with the ship. She technically had a bit more combat training than Pan, but anyone could see Pan had overtaken her. The warrior genes were strong, she supposed. Trunks had, understandably, been focusing on training Pan rather than her.
Marron knew the ship inside out now and it was increasingly her domain. She was closing some holes in their encryption protocols — she thought they would be happier if they were able to run a little differently — when Pan and Trunks suddenly materialised behind her.
It took her several moments to take in everything their arrival implied. They had travelled by instant transmission, a technique Pan had learned from her grandfather. She had not been able to use it on the way out because it required being able to feel the energy of someone you knew. And though they —clearly — could use it to return by focusing on Marron's energy, that strategy had the obvious disadvantage of leaving their shuttle behind.
But here they were, without the shuttle, and without Goten. And Trunks looked about as angry as Marron had ever seen him.
"You idiot, Pan. You—" He had sprung away from her the moment they'd appeared and was pulling at his hair as he spoke. "I can't believe you—."
"What happened?" Marron asked.
The side of Pan's head was bleeding.
"When I tell you to get out of the way, Pan, you have to—what were you thinking?"
Pan looked defiant, but her voice wobbled when she spoke.
"You're acting like I was in any real danger! When we both know he would never —"
"You — you don't even realise what just happened." Trunks stared at her, making a noise of disbelief. He sat down at the table and put his head in his hands, laughing humourlessly. "You don't even understand."
"Trunks, what happened?" Marron asked, insistent this time.
"She almost got herself — no, actually — she almost got us both killed."
"That's an exaggeration," Pan objected.
"It isn't." Trunks' voice was cold. "He attacked her and if I hadn't pulled her out of the way she'd be dead now."
Marron looked at Pan, who had paled suddenly. This was new information to Pan, it seemed.
"I don't think that's ..." Pan's unfinished sentence hung in the air.
Trunks began to pace the room, muttering to no one in particular.
"I forget that you come from that family, where nothing ever has consequences and the day always gets saved. Everything will be alright! Who cares what kind of danger your reckless behaviour brings down on everyone else's heads, it's all good!"
Marron stood up, but she wasn't sure which of them she wanted to comfort.
"It's got your grandfather all over it. Delusional, that's what you are." He spun to look at Pan. "You're just like him."
Pan's lower lip was shaking. "That's not fair, Trunks. And you know it."
He shook his head. He was looking through her, rather than at her. Marron noticed he was trembling, ever so slightly.
She thought of the information she hadn't shared. She hadn't wanted to tarnish Goten's goodness in their minds. Trunks had apparently arrived at the possibility of Goten as a source of danger by himself, but Pan had not. She had still believed he was just on an adventure — possibly she still did believe that, even now, even confronted with the evidence to the contrary.
Pan left the room. And after a couple of minutes spent in supportive silence with Trunks, Marron followed her.
Marron was back at the monitors, having resumed the encryption task. Trunks and Pan were both awake, as far as she could tell, but they had long since pretended to go to bed.
A panel to her left lit up. An incoming message.
Link 45715242bi43agfa996. Chanel open. Session 6.
Unknown sender: Is she okay
CAPCORP: Who is this?
Unknown sender: Is Pan okay?
CAPCORP: Yes
Unknown sender: Who is this
CAPCORP: It's Marron
Unknown sender: Why didn't she defend
CAPCORP: She gave up training after you left. I don't think she was able to defend against an attack like that.
CAPCORP: Goten?
CAPCORP: Are you there?
CAPCORP: Goten
CAPCORP: ?
Link 45715242bi43agfa996. Chanel open. Session 7.
CAPCORP: Goten?
Link 45715242bi43agfa996. Chanel open. Session 8.
CAPCORP: Goten?
CAPCORP: Are you there?
Link 45715242bi43agfa996. Chanel open. Session 9.
CAPCORP: Goten
CAPCORP: I know you're there
CAPCORP: Do you remember my sixteenth birthday party?
CAPCORP: I do.
CAPCORP: I remember it often.
CAPCORP: It's surprising when you think about it. Neither of us knew what we were doing. But it worked, didn't it? We had some kind of chemistry. I remember being really shocked.
CAPCORP: No offence!
CAPCORP: I was as inexperienced as you.
Unknown sender: I remember
CAPCORP: What do you remember?
Unknown sender: How it felt
CAPCORP: Me too
CAPCORP: I'm so happy you replied. I wasn't sure you were there.
CAPCORP: Goten?
CAPCORP: Are you there?
Unknown sender: I'm here
They continued to talk through the night, and the next, and the one after that. Marron said nothing to the others, for now.
Things were too fragile.
