Chapter 3

The next day the little ship docked with the space station, Interstellar Five. A metropolis of people and places. Everything from massive shopping districts and restaurants that catered to the vast number of Imperial military and civilians passing through the sector. To the cultural and art districts with music and theater and even entertainment of the more physical, exotic variety. It even boasted a fairly impressive library and up and coming charter schools for technology and medicine.

"It says they have an excellent medical facility as well," I said hopefully, reading off the little advertisement loop that was sent to the main computer's display upon docking, as enticement to the new comers.

"None of that. You're staying on the ship, and in your room." He added that last part as an afterthought.

"Well, what business do you have down there, maybe I can do a quick scan and see if there-" I started hopefully.

"I said no!" He shouted, cutting me off. Then after a moment of composing himself he continued in a more level tone, "I have some leads that I need to follow up on, and I need to be sure that you are out of trouble while I'm away."

I gave him a disgruntled look, "I get it, let me rot in my own body. What do you care, right? Well, I'm not going to help you until you get me some fucking medical attention. Real medical people, who have experience with tech and cybernetic bodies. And," I added, "if I have to bust outta this ship, forge your name, and get myself that attention, then so help me I will. I won't let you treat me like some kind of caged pet, Errold," he met my eyes then, "I'm a damned person." I finished, glaring.

He took a long look at me, "I have an idea about that. After I make my meet, I'll make sure we get all this straightened out."

The way he said it was vague and sinister and I found myself a little worried about what he thought he was going to do with me.

He, however, seemed pleased by the fact I appeared taken aback by this and left the cockpit, throwing over his shoulder, "Maddock, get her put away and grab your stuff, we leave in five."

Maddock gave me an apologetic expression and motioned for me to go ahead of him. "Put me away! Did you hear that? Like I'm some stray laundry! Ooh! If we were on my ship and I was still captain…"

"But your not, and we aren't." He said ryley to me.

I let out a snort of indignation, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of being funny at my expense and, using the cane, limped over to my room. We had bonded quite a bit the day before and I found myself liking his awkward, scholarly way of looking at situations and problems. He had so little life experience, mostly just book-learned knowledge.

I sullenly entered my quarters and turned around to give him the most anguished, pathetic look possible. "Come one, Maddock." I tried.

He chuckled and put a hand on my shoulder, "I'm sure it'll be quick." He said, giving my shoulder a squeeze.

"Yeah," I replied, defeated feeling, "hey, um, listen." I took a moment, touching his hand on my shoulder with my own, "If anything happens, if it looks like it's going sideways, you call me. Okay? Let me know and I'll come get you guys out of trouble."

He looked shocked, then laughed amused by my words, "If you say so, but he's an inquisitor." He said that last word with a bounce of his eyebrows, as if that should instill me with implicit trust. Then, smiling, he said, "I'll see you later, Andie." Giving me a little wave on his way out.

"Yeah, sure, but he's still human." I replied to the now empty doorway and the closing metal door sliding shut. I looked down at the floor, at my booted feet and wiggled my toes. Disgusted by the day and being locked up again I kicked the boots off, undid my jacket and shirt, pulled off my pants and undergarments and pulled my hair free of the braid I'd put it in the day before.

I looked at myself from the only slightly larger bedroom to the bathroom and my reflection in the mirror, half in shadow in the dim light, I almost looked like my mother. Well, like what I remembered of her before she succumb to her drug addiction. The light from the space station filtering through the small window fell on caramel skin and long brown hair, but my father's hazel, almond eyes set in high cheekbones stared back at me in that half light.

I looked away from that unsettling image, the thought of being anything like my parents made bile rise in my throat. They had sold me into the mechanicus when I was a little girl for drug money as soon as I showed an aptitude for electronics. Needless to say, I'd never forgiven them for that.

"Might as well get a shower in." I said to the cane as I set it down and entered the little closet-like bathroom, "don't be jealous of this handle in here, Lorgar." I laughed trying to lighten my mood, and turned the faucet. While the water slid down my body I continued the dialog with my assistance device, the cane named Lorgar. "I know you and I have become quite intimate, wait, no! Not like that, Lor, get your mind out of the gutter!" And I giggled. "I'm just saying things are complicated for me right now, and sometimes I have to use other objects to lean on." I ducked under the water, then said while my eyes were shut and the water dribbled in my mouth, "It's not me, Lorgar. It's you!" I cackled at this and rinsed the soap I'd lathered on my body off.

I watched the suds swirl down the drain and gasped at a sudden feeling of not being alone, a cold tingle of chill that ran down my spine. An old familiar chill that sunk into my heart. I leaned against the wall in front of me with both hands, palms against the plastic, fingers outspread, eyes shut tight against the frost that slowly trickled in around the corners not only of my mind, but my body.

"No," I begged. "I killed you."

A dark laugh and the cold tendrils of darkness slid up my waist, my torso, my shoulders, my arms. Those slimy, freezing, rotting fingers caressing my skin. I shuttered as It laughed in my mind and ears. I could feel It's cold fetid breath on the back of my neck and my tears mixed with the now freezing water of the shower.

"You cannot betray the betrayer." It's slithering tongue lapped at my ear, "You are mine. You said the words. Your soul is marked."

"No!" I shouted, "I am in the God-Emperor's grace. I'm yours no longer!" I shrieked and whipped around, my arm slamming into the wall of the shower with an impressive crash. I stared into the evaporating darkness. Looking down at my fist and arm, a golden glow traveling up from my chest to my arm, the sacred words of golden light slowly pulsing on my chest, I heard It laughing still, but this time it was further away, as if pushed back.

"You are mine and everything you touch shall be mine, and I shall destroy it all. I shall savor your little inquisitor's death as I savored your lovers."

I screamed at the wall, tears, hot and real falling from my cheeks. And then I stood gasping, huffing as my eyes leaked and the cold dissipated. My thoughts came slow and agonizing, trying to pull them from the haze of anger and despair. I entered the main room, soaked and still dripping and made a double take at the bed. Standing next to it was Mark Jenson, his face smiling at me. He was in military fatigues and stood leaning with a devil-may-care air against the wall, arms crossed over his chest.

"Good girl, chasing off that evil shithead. Now, don't let what It gave you go to waste. Remember, It's working against Lockharte as well." he grinned that funny half grin, his blue eyes sparkling.

I felt confused. "Use it? How?" I asked.

Then the pieces started to put themselves together. "That's it, put it together, sis." he said. Lockharte. He was here, in the station. And that had been Malaal as good as telling me. The thought sickened me, but Mark, or his echo, was right.

I looked around the room. Now noting that there wasn't a hint of computers or any accessible interfacing equipment anywhere in the room.

And while I could plug into the system through the light fixture, it really wasn't made for that, and anyway, I had my tablet that had a wireless connection. All I really needed to connect to the AI of the ship.

Passing next to where Mark had been and now had disappeared. I gently slumped down on the bed and wiggled over to the wall to brace my back against it. I reached behind my head to the long, extendable cord at the base of my skull. I pulled it out and plugged it into the tablet and started to write some baseline coding script. Then built on that a few larger access portal programs meant to confuse the computer and if need-be overload it in an attempt to shut it down. While in shut down mode I could tamper more easily with the ships codes. It would force the engines to go offline, all thrusters and even gravity would stop. A system-wide full-stop. As the computer booted back up it would open access to my pre-written code and insertion programs. I'd have to read the unfamiliar code of the ship and edit my replacement chunks to match. I'd also only have a few seconds to do it, and I could only do it once as the system would lock me out if I tried to do it again. But I was confident in my abilities.

This type of infiltration was my bread and butter back in the day and I was at my best when writing stuff on the fly.

After about forty-five minutes of building a decent library of programs to assist me I connected to the ship's computer, but I did it through the docking router, giving it false codes of an approaching ship, the alert would throw the ship into confusion and off on a wild goose chase while I snuck into the mainframe of the computer.

As soon as I connected to the main computer it instantly started rebuffing me and giving me error codes. But I connected to all it's ports and began to bombard it with viruses, clumsy hacking programs and some general inquiries just for variety.

Right on schedule it detected the massive attack and an actual breach of the systems and promptly started a ship-wide shutdown.

I began to float off my bed as the gravity turned off and looped my leg under the metal cot to keep from floating away. And there I waited patiently in the dark of my room, like a sea creature hidden under the sand, lurking for its prey to swim over head and within pouncing range.

Again, just as I had predicted the ship started its reboot procedure. The hum of the ship's systems coming alive again and my little programs, lurking under the sand with me pounced from the tablet to the mainframe, wreaking havoc with the larger AI. Death by a million cuts.

Et tu, Inquisitor? Et tu?

I giggled. It felt good to be weaving in and out of the code again, keeping track of the two hundred or so programs each attacking different aspects of the computer's code. Since I was embedded in the computer like a tick, I felt it was time to take a much needed walk. I gently pushed myself up, floating into a standing position and waited a moment, and fell into a three point landing as the gravity came back on. So much chaos in such a short time, it was a shame that no one was around to see it.

I put on some pants and a shirt and walked up to the door, grabbing my stick and thought at the metal portal to open, my programs forcing the AI to obey my orders. Then I walked through the corridors right to where Maddock had shown me the engines and mainframe. All snuggled together. I unplugged from the tablet and directly into the mainframe and had a little conversation with her.

She was pleasant enough, if confused at the intrusion. But I quickly rewrote several books worth of code so she would allow me to fully access her.

"Sweetie," I said gently in the code, "I need you to give the docking personnel your Inquisitional codes so I can do a sweep of their computer's main frame.

"Oh no, I'm so sorry Andromeda Tsin, I can't allow that. I'd really like to help but only the Inquisitor can authorize those codes."

I frowned annoyed. I thought I'd just rewritten the code to account for that. Oh, interesting, I thought, There's the code, but what's this? There, in amongst the code was something new that'd I'd never seen before. In all my time of pretending to be an inquisitor and having to learn and alter various system's code on the fly to resemble a real inquisitor's rosetta, I had never encountered this anti-infiltration program.

This new, self contained piece of code was nestled into the old, familiar code.

"Well, hello there, little buddy. What's your name?" I asked it.

"I am the Andromeda Initiative. I protect this ship from fake inquisitors." My heart nearly did a somersault at its precious little readout. They named a piece of code after me? I felt color and heat raise in my cheeks and ears from the blush that rose up my body. What a shame I have to cut your adorable little head off your sweet little shoulders, I thought.

I isolated it's parameters with fair ease now that I had the whole ship assisting me instead of just the little tablet. I had named him Tiny Trusty. Feeling fond now of the little fella, he'd been such a champ through this.

"Ok, Andromeda Initiative, come out, little guy, I have detected a breach."

"I don't detect anything. Wait, what's that?"

"I don't know, little buddy, you better check it out."

"Yes, I will do this. Funny, there's nothing ou-czzzzt"

"Poor little guy. Rest in peace, kiddo. Okay, beautiful, think you can send those Inquisitor codes now?" I asked the mainframe.

There was a pause, then, "Authorization accepted, Inquisitor Andromeda. Sending request. Request received. Please wait." After a moment she chimed in, "Codes have been accepted. The data stream is open, Inquisitor."

"Damn right it is, you gorgeous program." And I sunk into the massive data stream.

It was far to vast, though, and even though I parsed pieces of the AI, after naming her Goldie, to go fishing for me it seemed like a needle in a haystack.

Then I struck gold. There he was. Caught on camera red handed, the drug-addled fiend. I knew he wouldn't be able to stay away from the medical facilities and all the chemicals it promised, and my hunch had paid off.

It was just a glimpse through the reflection of a glass wall, but I'd recognize that renegade anywhere. It even looked like he glanced up at me through the camera on purpose. Now that I had a picture, I cleaned it up and sent it off to the head of security with an 'URGENT!' And the mark of the inquisitor like a little care package of 'fuck you' to Lockharte.

I got a little flag back saying they were uploading it to a station-wide manhunt and an evil smile spread across my broken lips. The hunt was on and it was only a matter of time before my pray would step out and be seen. He worked best when his anonymity was secure and now I'd really fluffed that for him.

My heart pounded with the chase as my little programs and me searched for him, combing through huge packets of data.

"Come on, I know your in here somewhere."

Then another hunch paid off as a brothel lit up with a hit. This one recent, this morning. He had checked out though. Damn. I thought, He's so close.

I decided to look up Errolds movements now, since I was hitting a dead end with my search. The inquisitor, unlike Lockharte, was not interested in hiding from the cameras, and I doubted he gave much thought to erasing his passage from the systems. As I thought, his path through the station had been fairly easy to follow. He had met up with a blind, older man, his ID when I pulled it up said he was an astropath. And the three of them, Maddock in tow, started for another part of Interstellar Five. Then their path suddenly stopped. I searched all the corridors, but Errold, the astropath and Maddock were gone form the station it looked. But that's impossible, no one just disappears.

They had stopped being visible on section fourteen security cameras on the outer ring. That was an undeveloped part of the station. That fact tugged at my mind while I tried to bring up any feeds, they all seemed to be down. A sinking feeling started in my stomach. If I was a tech-priest, with lots of implants, able to live for a very long time without air, an abandoned outer ring of a space station would be the perfect place to set up an evil lair. If anything goes wrong, just space everything.

"Goldie! Undock yourself!"

"Acknowledged, sending out request."

I felt panic rise up in my stomach, and my chest ached, my skin crawling as the emblazoned sacred writings of my new god writhed in warning over my skin. "Now, Goldie, do it now!"