14 - Three Moon Jig / Attenuation
Kivi
Flotsam Fleet, Lower Compartments
Udeav System
Colonial Space
Timo was still feeling groggy from the ride up. He'd spent some extra credits hitching a ride with an unaffiliated trawler captain. A longer, slower journey in exchange for less scrutiny. No faces. No names. No worries.
A life of everlasting insomnia meant it was unlike the wolf to sleep more than a self-allotted six hours, let alone slink away to Udeav's most infamous moon with the intention of mixing business and pleasure. The journey had its benefits, though. For one; Timo needed Beá's resources, and he needed the time to process their past, to make peace with it.
Relax for a moment.
Maybe he'd even get to, assuming Timo survived the unpleasant conversation he knew was coming.
Kivi. The most unfortunate of Udeav's trio of moons, if you could even call it that. Unlike Usva or Sade, Kivi was more of a vaguely spheroid asteroid. It didn't affect tides much and wasn't important for any minerals or conventional commodities. No, Kivi was important for a more situationally unique resource: exotic parts and the knowledge methods to acquire them.
The iron bulkhead behind Timo shattered closed as he floated through the rubberized tube he'd paid so handsomely to be dropped off in. The captain wisely resisted at first; the trawler crew didn't exactly know who's docking tube it was, but knew well to stay the hell away from it.
Through the bent-metal portholes, Timo could see a cacophony of varied vessels and prefab structures suspended on the rock and steel chaos. Often, whole apartment blocks were tethered with nothing more than a few ancient chains and anchors.
The Flotsam Fleet, where the Kivians had carved out a river-raft boat-esque lifestyle for themselves was nothing more than the hollowed out husks of airsealed hulls. Lifeboats. Freighters. All brands: Venom, Macbeth and Corneria too. The Flot's airworthiness was its priority, but the jetsam of bulk refuse and decommissioned space rames also required some degree of gravity. A privilege Timo knew he took for granted.
Most communities in the colonies measured social progress in nontrivial things such as crime statistics, arable farmland or access to clean water. Kivi's flotsam measured it in terms of access to gravity.
The Flot was officially out of Vikr's corporate zone; but that never stopped their enforcers from showing up unannounced and very much armed. When they needed something normal logistics couldn't legally obtain, they bargained with smugglers.
An unofficial symbiotic social arrangement with no official appointed director to claim fealty to, so it would seem.
Timoteus had always known better.
He floated around Beá's docking tube, using the floating pull-tabs to propel himself on a nostalgic journey. He was separated from the cold vacuum by ten mere millimeters of steel, lead and rubber. A-grav generators were expensive. Expense attracted attention and attention attracted Vikrmen.
He'd feel more comfortable once he was on solid ground, and not just because he was at a privateer's mercy. Normally he'd have brought some protection along, but Kivi was the place where that wasn't usually well received.
Timo launched himself around the final bend with a stout extension of his arm. In his other arm, he cradled a wicker satchel with his backup plan. Inertialess, he drifted slowly to the hexagonal bulkhead separating him from this hostile environment.
Timoteus' pulse elevated as several unpleasant thoughts crossed his mind. Maybe it would just be a different type of hostility than he remembered, but he still had a slight hobble from their last meeting. The rickety, rusted patina of the aging bulkhead didn't give him much confidence, Beá's own intention no doubt.
He pushed the intercom. No response, of course. She left things dilapidated as a front. The red blinking LED indicated someone was listening.
He felt some vibrations in the paneling as the atmosphere vented into the chamber. The hexagonal loading door before him hissed, emitting steam as the room pressurized. The first high-pitched whir of a commercial gravity well shrieked as Timo suddenly felt the weight of a brisk point-nine gravs drop him to the floor. He braced, his right hand and arm breaking his fall as much as he could, though his hip still collided with the textured rubber mat on the decking.
"Was hoping you'd be smarter than to come alone."
Timo hadn't heard her voice in years, but it reverberated exactly the way he remembered. Her words wrapped in a highlands confidence that bordered sultriness.
"Thought you'd learned your lesson, pup. Guess I was wrong about you."
A small viewport manually cranked open, revealing a pair of very red irises behind panels of glass. Timo stood and tried to gesticulate as much non-verbal sociability as he could.
"Beá!" Timo greeted, elongating her short name. Bay-yah.
The wolf's feigned cheeriness did not work as her eyes narrowed, unmoved by his unnaturally emotive display. It took her near ten seconds to speak.
"Aye, look how far you've come!"
"Mata-fooking-Surga, Timo," She mocked, "King of bloody Ketumat."
He was surprised that she knew so quickly.
"First," She started, slamming her fist into the bulkhead so hard Timo was able to hear it shake through the door, "You leave me for that stuck-up hybe; that godsdamn, open-legged utopian. That dangerous, vile, vulpy, bitch!"
Timo twisted his head, holding back a snarl. Beá raised her hand and shook her head behind the glass, interjecting him before he could protest further.
"Yes, I know she's dead! Yeah, I know she meant well. And, I'm sorry, I don't really mean it!"
"We'd been in competition since we were kids. Forgive me for being sore about you runnin' off with her."
"But you," she growled darkly. "Can't even be bothered to let me know you were leaving."
"No warnin'. No call. No text. Not even a note. And, can't help but notice from up here, the planet's not free yet."
"And now I'm here," Timo offered, softly. He wasn't smiling now.
"Aye, here you are. I don't know what's gotten into you, but I'm not the sentimental type. You can't hurt me. I don't owe you, and you're lucky to be alive at the moment."
"There's a reason Zeouna never contacted me. I'm not your little call-girl. Even she knew that."
Tim winced. She didn't stop, of course, the curse of strong women in his life continuing its unstoppable march.
"Second! Come to find out you two weren't even sleeping together," she accosted incredulously. "So, I'm not sure what your damned angle was."
"You're curling your hair again," Timo appreciated warmly, completely ignoring her fatalistic barbs. He hoped his interruption wouldn't be his last words.
"My paws are on the vent key! Don't fook with me. My time is precious."
"I don't give a damn what your title is. I trusted you, Timo. And you didn't just leave me, you pulled me into your hopeless tribe and ruined my godsdamned business model first."
"Now, you send your goons to intimidate me? Me?!"
Timo had known it would be poorly received, but done it on purpose. The "goon's" failure was his victory. He needed plausible deniability on his part; he needed some time away. Now he wouldn't be questioned as to why.
"And you expect to just waltz in here and beg my approval for a goddamn suicide mission. That's right, I know. As if you didn't abandon us all those years ago?"
"Just like that?" She challenged. Her eyes didn't need to be hotrod-red to convey her fury, but it sure helped.
The silence was so thick with tension not even a knife could cut through it. She'd made her point, and Timoteus dawdled, scraping his mind for the right words.
"Well… Uh," Timoteus began unsteadily, "that was plan A."
"And what's plan B, Timo?"
"It better be fooking brilliant, because I'm about to flush the lock out as my formal notice of declination."
"An apology," he offered up with an exhale. It was meant in earnest, she was half-right about him.
"And?" She said, an eyebrow raised.
Timoteus rolled his eyes.
"Clearing my schedule for the next rotation."
On the one hand, she nodded; the barest stretch marks of an impending smile at the corners of her snout. On the other, her eyebrows raised with a level of suspicion that gave him some cause for concern.
He lifted the wicker basket and opened the top hinge, raising it toward the porthole.
He knew what she liked, and was glad it was still intact after his little tumble. A whole lake-raised salmon on ice. Accompanied by freshly harvested potatoes, and a menagerie of handpicked vegetables and herbs. She probably didn't see the wine; but she was more of a rye girl anyway if he recalled correctly.
Her face disappeared from the window and the plating behind it hinged shut. Timoteus held his breath for a long moment and simultaneously prepared for a dignified death while smiling with an air of self-satisfaction.
The airlock doors shuddered and hissed as condensation escaped the humidified environment. It slid open.
Beá was leaning against a dormant forklift drone; all diminutive one-point-six meters of pirate queen. Legs and arms crossed, head tilted. Her shoulder rested on the drone's faded orange plastic hull coating, held in place by the well-worn checkered shoulder pads on her russet brown leather riding jacket.
"My. My."
She was as pretty as Timoteus recalled; a petite akita inu canid. Ruby-red eyes. Golden fur with a white from her eyes mottled down her snout. Copper-tinged curls in a forward-lobbed pixie cut. Her tail clipped a tiny bit shorter than most by an errant bulkhead vent in her distant past; it used to curl up her backside, he remembered.
"You are desperate."
A sly grin grew on her face as she sensed the opportunity before her. For the terminally lonely like Beá, intimacy was for time she didn't have; and time was money. In this case, she'd shrewdly bartered for all three.
Usva
Castoff's Bethel
Udeav System
Colonial Space
The investigator was here; exactly when he said he'd be, too. He must have been very good to find the rectory so quickly in the disorder of Usva's bustling domes.
A serious looking man; twenty minutes had gone by and the old mouse hadn't yet figured out what type of Canid he was. She'd offered him tea, and he'd declined twice before accepting her gratitude. It was humbling; he'd come all this way just to sit with an old abbess in her convent-funded abode.
Usva. This pale blue rock was holy ground to some Udeavans; heretical to say the least. But, it held a different sort of magic to the abbess that ran the chapel ministry at Castoff's Bethel. It was a pleasant look-alike of what Macbeth had been before she'd taken her vows. Domed communities built into rock.
Her living space wasn't much. Lit candles, statuettes and varied iconography atop plastic furniture. Faux-wood paneling floor-to-ceiling. A rotating fan blade that shook at just the wrong pace and frequency.
She was as destitute as her flock; something she felt her God's would have approved of. Above all, she had nothing to hide from Gods nor other animals alike
"So, you said you had questions, my dear."
The dog, she thought he was, nodded knowingly and reached into his black cloth messenger bag. Her eyes had long since become secondary sensory to her hands and ears, but she could make out a pair of jowls and floppy hounds ears on the man.
The abbess heard the sound of paper; a sound you didn't hear very often anymore. Being sharp, the abbess suspected his selected choice of medium indicated that he had secrets he did not trust digitized. Either that, or he was simply a connoisseur of the ancient ways. Regardless, she smiled. Paper was still common enough in her youth for the sound to be comforting. Now, Lylat had given her fifty years and the colonies gave her another forty. Even with medicine being what it was, it was much more than the old Mouse ever thought she'd have.
The guest dropped two sheets onto the table. Photographs. She adjusted her eyes in the meager light and focused until she found a familiar aloof gaze staring back.
"An old friend of yours?" The detective asked directly.
'Old friend,' that's one way of putting it.
For most in her age cohort, it would have been too little to go on. But the abbess knew that smug white patch anywhere. It was good to see her alive.
The years had certainly washed over the old priestess, but she also recognized the machinations behind that little bastard's bright blue eyes from any altitude. She barely needed a second look, the sting was still fresh.
"Zay," the abbess said softly. Waves of joy, sadness and remembrance together.
"Zay?" He asked. "That's what she called herself then, right?"
"She called herself a lot of names."
"Zeouna of Settler City?" He narrowed down.
"Precious little thing," the abbess quivered back, confirming his question with a nod. "If you can believe that."
"And, one of my best students."
"In divinity?" He asked, tilting his head.
The nun emitted a cackling laugh. A lifetime of spacer's lung blackened it into a grimaced wheeze.
"That one?" She asked in disbelief. "That little shit?"
He smiled a bit too, she thought she saw. It was hard not to, the happy memory of that little gray-and-white devil was too infectious.
"She was a terror the day she passed through our door. No invite, of course. None-needed. I'd never say no to a girl in need."
Her eyes distanced. She hadn't reflected on this in awhile. The old abbess always regretted having not understood that scared little girl from their first moment together.
"In time, she became our little terror."
The investigator, vaguely moved, tried to return to the facts with an open-ended question.
"What more can you tell me about her?"
She remembered it like it was yesterday.
"Night owl."
"A ghost?"
"She'd sleep during the day. Avoided prayer meetings and scripture reading at all costs.
"I shouldn't-" she trembled, tripping over her words. "I shouldn't have been so hard on her."
"But, a good student?" He asked, vexed at her response.
"Little Zay?" the Abbess glowed. "She'd finish her homework and lesson plans weeks ahead of time. Stole all my material!"
"All the other ladies couldn't figure it out at first"
"Until?"
She laughed, though It wasn't funny then.
"We denied her food until eventually she confessed to bugging my computer."
"Your what?"
The dog was confused by the older, though technically correct, term.
"Sorry, my PDA."
He was impressed. "So she was smart?"
"Smarter than smart. And crafty too!"
More happy wheezing.
"She'd been selling the answers to the class for a share of rations as well as other contraband. Tried to beat our hunger sanctions. Only problem was, the others stopped trading after a passing grade. "
He crossed his arms. "Did she do anything for this chapel, ma'am?"
"She worked the soup kitchen in the evenings. Every evening. She demanded it," the abbess recollected, "The only reason we kept her at first. She served slop until the last animal was out the door. No breaks, no nothin'."
"That's all?"
"It was more than enough," the abbess defended, sticking up for the atheistic miscreant. One with a soul larger than she had ever been prepared to accept at the time.
"Was she always so revolutionary?" The detective asked. This question wasn't on his script, it seemed it was personal.
"If that's your term for having heart, sure," She responded proudly "She believed in helping others. No matter who they were."
"And, once dinner was over, she'd skip off. We didn't know where, but we figured it was bad. Sent many sisters out in the streets to search for the little brat. If we were up late enough, we'd find her plugged into the AR reader in the library stalls."
"She'd pry her way into the precious few university correspondence courses we had. Too expensive for us to access during the Federation days. Don't know how she managed that."
"We had a rule. Lights out for the kids after dinner. So we removed her. Sometimes by force."
The abbess started to shed a tear.
"Imagine," she begged him. "Twelve years old."
"Us, ripping off the reader from her head. Her, reeking of hash smoke. Eyes burning red as can be. Sometimes, tiny bottles of Kuayfruit brandy in the bin."
She waved her hands, gesturing to her memories of frenzied holodisplays.
"Lines of code. Chemical equations. Whatever held her attention for the moment."
"Just frozen in time."
The holy woman's sigh was a bit more mournful now.
"Twelve," she reiterated.
"Back then, when I'd have to remind her she was a child. Always the same grin on that one. A terminal problem with authority."
She smiled again, remembering those moment's struggles, those sleepless nights; all with warmth. Hundreds of stories like it. Always worth it.
The old mouse laughed. Blissful to not to have forgotten a single detail on one of her most beloved strays.
"Little Zay," she said. "It was always so hard to be cross with her."
"That was until she ran off to Kivi," The investigator led. "Lost soul?"
"Ran? Zeouna? Never," the abbess corrected harshly. "Zay was never lost."
"But she did get involved with-"
"-She reverted only to what these colonies raised her to be! Nothing more!" The Abbess advocated harshly, blocking the brown labrador's instinctive condemnation.
The abbess glanced out the leaky porthole in her quarters as the nun's protective edginess lowered. It hissed subtly, leaking precious atmosphere into Usva's almost non-existent gravity well. She pondered how to explain to a center how addictive living in the Flotsam Fleet was to those that still remained.
"Though, I never really understood," the elder nun finally confessed. "The girl was a genius. Certified, measured and all. But she chose-"
"-The streets?" The investigator asked.
"Quick Money," she responded. "Maybe we denied her a way out. Maybe it's our fault. But, the flotsam loved her all the same. That rebellious spark, y'know. Always a plan, a way out. There wasn't a single drop of retreat in those veins, so she always won out. The rules of our whole, tiny world became petty fucking games to her. And, she was better at playing them. Zay had larger ambitions than our broken fleet."
"Look at me," the abbess mused. "Sounds like I'm in confession now. I'm supposed to be judging her."
"You respected her?" The investigator asked, almost charmed by the answer he already knew.
"I loved her like she was my own," the old mouse confided, a guilty smile on her face. "She was our beautiful, little disaster. And, I respected what she was capable of. I love what she can be."
She caught herself. "Could have been," she corrected, sadly.
"Instead of?"
"In spite of," she corrected again.
He pocketed the printed pictures and shifted his weight in the uncomfortable plastic seat.
"What did she do on Kivi?"
"She ran a gang in the flotsam. All girls, all working drugs, larceny, piracy, prostitution. She was at the top. And, as I told you, even that didn't satisfy her for long."
"So," the nun exhaled, "one night, she'd descended on Set City with her friends. Couldn't have been more than seventeen, but people responded. She arrived and things were never the same down there; like it was her destiny."
"Why do you think she left Kivi?"
"The reasons anyone else would. She was just a baby; forced into the trade for scraps. But she always had plans, that one."
"She made a difference up here too," the Abbess admitted. "I hope she always remembered that."
"Any friends?" He asked, moving on.
She shook her head in the negative.
"Anyone ever check-in on her after she left? Anyone else ever ask you about her?"
The nun was silent for a few moments, considering her next words carefully.
"Yes. Had to be over ten years ago," she admitted. "Young man. Sounded like he was from Corneria."
She'd remembered he didn't look like her at all and he seemed to be in a rush.
"The kid marched in asking for a 'Zeouna of Settler City.' Wanted to know where she was."
The detective leaned in; this is what he'd been looking for.
"What did you say?"
"I'd never heard that family name at this point so I didn't know who he was talking 'bout. I told him I didn't know and I never talk about any of the girls without proof they knew them."
The investigator drilled down further.
"Did he give you his name?"
She didn't remember; truthfully. She had no reason to lie to the man before her.
"I don't remember it," she said, struggling to recollect anything.
"Lukas?" She guessed before apologizing. She had no idea where the name came from.
"It's okay," the dog reassured. "Keep trying."
"What did he look like?"
"A fox. Or Canid. Pointy ears. Dark. Gray or black. I remember him being on the darker side, at least. I don't remember much more. It was so dark, so it was hard to tell."
"It's fine," he noted, tapping his watch PDA. "Do you remember anything else?"
"He was proper," she said. "He was very well spoken. That's why I said Cornerian."
Her turn for questions.
"Why does it matter?" The abbess asked. "She's gone. And now she's never coming back."
She wasn't fooled. With age came wisdom; the wisdom to squeeze out truth from fiction. Beneath his limited questions, his calm demeanor, there was a terrible truth: Zeouna would never return from the surface.
Little Zay was a memory in the God's hands now. Maybe she was even at peace.
"What will you do now?" He asked, ignoring her questions.
"You can't be serious," The tough old mouse balked. "I'm only ninety! I'm going to keep this ministry going until I'm nothin' but ash floating between bulkheads. These kids need someone."
He cleared his throat before delivering a tempting offer.
"What if someone bought up the ministry? Cash offer, today," he asked, a sincere vein of hope in his tone. "Where would you go to retire?"
She smiled. Pitying his myopia. The old woman wished others felt the peace she'd found. There was assurance in charity; and there would always be people to help. In time, maybe he'd learn it, too. There was still ample time for him; to be sure. There was always hope.
She touched his right hand, rested on the table and squeezed as much as the frail old field mouse could.
"I'd take your money. I'd move to the empty lot next door and set up a new kitchen. This isn't a job to me."
"There's more Zay's out there," she resolved. "I will not leave them."
His head dropped.
"I'm sorry, ma'am," he confessed.
The abbess couldn't see him clearly but he had nothing to apologize for.
"For what, dear?"
"I wish you hadn't said that."
The last sound she heard was a short, sharp click of steel on brass.
No one had reacted to the trio of ninety-decibel shots. The sound-waves simply reverberated through the Flot as routine sounds of normalcy.
Percival was pleased with things, so far.
A few minutes later his new driver, Nic, returned to the vac-bay. The plain-looking labrador uneasily slammed shut the Jumplight yacht's suicide door and stumbled into the passenger compartment.
The old mole grunted, reading through his notes. The most empathetic greeting he could give for a man who'd just killed for him.
What's his problem?
He was studying. Percival knew what he needed to get out of tomorrow's Wreathe hullabaloo by heart. It was the smaller details to get him there he needed to commit to memory. Timelines. Names. Relatives. Sympathy. Hatred. Whatever. Words to make them at ease.
But now, Percival needed some words to put him at ease.
"Well?" He asked, eyes still buried in the tablet's text. "Did she know?"
"No," the deeply unsettled labrador declared. His eye's bore a hole straight through the floor. His breaths were shallow and rapid.
Percival Powell lowered his tablet.
What's he blubbering about? The mole thought, confused. Don't tell me, I hired another ninny for a driver?
"No. Or 'you don't think so'?" Percival antagonized, unimpressed with Nic's response..
Percy's driver found his backbone and straightened up. More likely, Nic knew how much his employer hated effete displays of weakness.
"Someone else found her first."
"Who?"
"Doesn't matter," Nic said defensively. "It was over a decade ago. And, she didn't know more than that he was something eared like a canid."
Bold of him. Percival considered Nic's words and the finality of the abbess' situation.
"She couldn't remember, mister Powell. And, you made yourself clear."
Percival let silence fill the gap to consider his options. Nic's palpable anxiety grew.
He's right. Percival thought. Even if she did remember, she's not talking about it anymore. Right race, too. Though knowing him, it could have been a proxy. The timeline fits neatly.
The parochial old mole reached into his coat pocket and furnished his ebony clay pipe. With a snap, his VI assistant lit it perfectly to his liking.
What the hell kind of game have you been up to, Vauqelin?
After blowing a few smoke rings; Percival's tone was a beat more positive.
"I see," he spoke again, "So, she was the last on the list?"
"Yes."
A simple word, but one that took an apparent toll on Nic to say.
"Clean house," Percival chirped. "Nice work, Nic."
"Big day tomorrow."
Nic nodded his head once and left the passenger compartment to return to the driver's seat. Percival powered off his tablet and stared out the window back to the tawny-green marble before him.
"Big day."
Sade
Long-Range Comms Array 3
Udeav System
Colonial Space
Any second. Any second now.
The thirty-two second routine, as punctual now as it was when the attending technician was first posted here six-months ago. The animal's name wasn't important, neither was his appearance. It should have been, but given his unremarkable existence in the most remote place he'd ever been, nothing about it really mattered. He might as well just have been a sentient pair of blue fire-retardant overalls and corporate ID numbers.
Now!
Two bassy clicks. A rolling whirr of the signal tensioner for five seconds; capped off with a ten second electrical buzz. The long-range antenna's way of interfacing its handshake through the central systems' arrays. Then? The cycle would begin anew; thirty-two seconds across.
It was hypnotic, lulling; and not in a goodway. The cycle induced anxiety. Thirty-two seconds of expectant terror until there were twenty asynchronous seconds of fleeting bliss. Terrible, even if the VI's were supposed to do all the monitoring and most of the work. And they never did it right! Six months into his contract and innumerable close calls meant that the recently-minted doctorate of signal processing was starting to develop a nervous tick as a result.
The technician was up late again. Day, night; he didn't know which this was anymore. On Sade, it all looked the same. All he knew was he was supposed to be sleeping; it's what the company schedule blocked this time off as.
I should have been more, he often thought while manning his unremarkable workstation. It was a depressing place, nothing more than blue fiber and painted aluminum cubicles. A tablet with multi-port displays was chained to the desk, reducing its no-doubt tempting resale value in these gods-forsaken colonies. He never doubted that this all could have been automated; but his considerable pay, twelve month rations and two hop-and-skip shuttle rides was still cheaper for the company.
Everything was chained down like a prison. Six months left. Two-hundred-kay. I can do this. Six more and I'm done. For good.
He looked at the holographic video frame thumbtack-mounted to the cube playing and replaying a snippet of him, his wife, and his newborn son posing for a photo at some remote farmstead national park somewhere on dusty Papetoon. It was a weird vacation choice, he thought; but his wife wanted the novelty of a roadtrip in the desert. He sighed, remembering that his son was crawling now.
It was imminent. The cycle.
Thirty-two seconds. He thought with revulsion. One more to add to the countdown.
There was another reason for a tech at each point; liability. If any one LRS tower was over or under the attenuation rate; they all would be. Worse still; there was no real way to tell without the weekly check-ins from lead technicians. They could pull the data remotely of course, but that was only notional. Precise readings by an inspector were required. Dan, of course. A community-college baccalaureate in applied communication, whatever the fuck that was.
Wait. The tech woke up from his hate-nap. Where's the clicks? No buzz. No alerts?
It was like someone ripped out his heart and threw it off the roof.
He leapt to it, obedient to the signals. He swept the tablet's screen and typed into the holographic keyboard that projected itself onto the laminated particle board table.
$(0315; LRC-3) Attenuation LRC-3 out need coverage
As he waited for his answer another of his favorite video memories played on his picture frame: his wife holding their new baby post-delivery. The five-second loop sustained him.
Wonder if it'll be Bräm or Jess tonight? He thought. Jess is direct; to the point. Bräm's going to give me shit for weeks.
He checked the console for the response that arrived.
#(0316; LRC-4) LRC-4 covering. Can you see the issue yet?
LRC tower four. Productive. Jess it is. He typed his own reply.
$(0316; LRC-3) Not yet. No alerts. going up top.
He stood off his workstation as the lights flickered. Strange. More power issues?
The technician swept the tablet again and was unnerved. They had just gotten a new generator on the site; everything was showing normal except for an increased draw on his network interface.
Camera ports? What?
He stood, nearly kicking the wheeled chair back into the wall. The doctor-technician absconded down the meagerly-lit maintenance hallway to the security room to check on the feeds.
His heart jumped again. To his shock, the door, on a magnetic lock, was already askew.
There wasn't much to do here except watch films, play games and read. And, to his misfortune, his favorite genre was horror. Befitting this, he searched for a weapon quietly, tiptoeing behind the toolset mid-hall and considering a series of grease-spattered spanners to work with.
"Climb," He thought he heard. The synapses didn't compute, he was looking for the largest weapon to defend himself with.
Wait. What?
"CLIMB," a louder voice commanded, causing the technician to shriek and drop the spanner.
It fell, striking him on the foot and falling between the drainage den lining the flooring.
The technician ran, striking his head on the lower-hanging beam before sprinting back to his workroom. He frantically locked the door behind him with his pinpad. He rushed a chair against the door, uselessly, before temporarily blacking out on the floor a few seconds later.
Concussed, he came too a few minutes later. Blood poured down his forehead. He tried to access the camera feeds on his own PDA and found only blackness staring back at him.
I need help. I'm not alone here.
He typed, oblivious to the blood droplets streaking on the floor.
$(0320; LRC-3) HELP. Cameras down someones inside! Call the police!
He was met with the one message he didn't want to see.
###Network Failure###
The technician, now locked in, nearly had a coronary before his sole connection with the outside universe broke through.
#(0320; LRC-4) Network outage? Triaging. Confirming cameras down? Hearing voices?
Jenn, the lifeline that she was, was still on his link-local network! He jumped for joy, knowing Vikr LLC valued these lines so much they'd likely have a platoon-sized recovery force streaking through Sade's weak atmosphere in minutes!
#(0320; LRC-4) Strange.
Yes, Jenn! The technician screamed in his head, audibly emitting a whimper. Yes! It is fucking strange! What do I do?
#(0320; LRC-4) Stay calm. Everything is under control.
The man in the blue-overalls slammed his fingers on the table as hard and fast as he could.
$(0321; LRC-3) CONTROL? I NEED HELP AND I NEED IT RIGHT NOW.
The response was less than what he'd hoped for.
#(0321; LRC-4) How about
How about? How about what?!
#(0321; LRC-4) How about you take the lift up.
#(0321; LRC-4) Max the gain. Override the network issues.
He fell onto his bottom, defeated. The lift abutted the maintenance corridor, even if he was able to make it to it, the local cretins outside would gut him as soon as he turned the corner. They'd strew his innards across the rocky plateau and make his one-year sacrifice vain. The concussion delayed him a bit, but it only took the doctor twenty seconds to realize there was another option.
The emergency ladder in the back of the room.
$(0322; LRC-3) I'm going up the ladder. Call for help now
#(0322; LRC-4) Release the drones.
Good idea, he thought. Vikr gave us these for emergency use. They'll find where those bastards are.
With a flick of his wrist, two taps and a password entry; he summoned three drones from the rearward storage facility. He heard them rustle and pop out of their single-use launch tubes. The folding drones weren't armed, but they would tell him exactly where those pirates were.
There was yet another problem, however. His communication with Jenn and the drones was tethered to his tablet. Once he climbed, it would be all over if he got into a scrap.
#(0324; LRC-4) You need to move quickly. Are you still there?
$(0325; LRC-3) I need my tablet.
He could see his reply had been read. His realization matched Jess' own.
#(0325; LRC-4) Fireaxe in the corner.
He didn't flinch, adrenaline coursing hard through his veins and supercharging his resolve. He lurched toward the emergency toolkit under his workstation, unlatched the box, unwrapped the implement and faced his workstation.
I'm getting home! He resolved, taking a two-handed grip. I will look my son in the eyes again.
He swung twice. The first was a spark-emitting stutter; he bellowed a beastly roar as the second swing's falling edge freed the alumiglass tablet from its office bondage.
He placed the tablet in his leather bookbag, swung it over his shoulder and pressed the emergency release for the ladder.
$(0327; LRC-3) Going up. How long until HELP?
He didn't wait for an answer, there would be time up top. Moments later, he was in the ladder tube ascending to his vantage point rung-by-rung. It was going well, minus the blood seeping down into his eyes from time to time. Midway, there was a rumbling sound that shook the tube. He hoped it was one of his seeking drones.
Forty meters up, he reached the emerging hatchway. It would emerge behind the liftway, which was still at the bottom. Still, he'd seen too many movies to lapse his judgment now.
He unlatched the entryway just enough to peak his eyes out of. He waited several minutes.
No movement. No clearing of breath. No shuffling.
So he emerged, tasting the briny thinness of Sade's miniscule atmosphere. He crawled along the decking, bathed in the occasional bright red light of the LRS-3's powerful obstruction lights.
#(0333; LRC-4) Do it.
Touching the gain was supposed to be relegated to the inspectors work. It was dangerous, frankly, despite it being a simple knob under lock-and-key. The gain might bring whole networks into range, but the frequencies could be harmful if a tech was exposed. But, while Dan and Vikr's other undeserving inspectors were were fucking gullible idiots; LRS-3's technician contributed to books of research on the subject.
He cranked open the box and twisted the dial. As long as he was downstairs he would experience acceptable levels of electromagnetic fields. He'd live.
He typed back.
$(0333; LRC-3) Done. Going back down. Sending out emergency broadcast.
#(0334; LRC-4) You are going to want to wait before doing that.
Wait? For what?
As if psychic, Jenn followed up with a reason.
#(0334; LRC-4) Drones.
He typed into his newly-liberated local machine.
$print output dronecam[1]
And so it did.
The tower began to buzz and the red obstruction light flickered overhead. A cold chill sprinted up the rungs of his spine as he witnessed the back of his head through the delayed feed.
The vid-feed suddenly accelerated forward as the drone sped towards him.
The technician ducked down, feeling wind brisk past his ears as the drone zipped in the light point-eight-five gravs. Had it connected, his skull would be in pieces!
He whimpered, low crawling to the alcove. He creeped toward the emergency ladder, unlatching it with a grunt and caught the first rung before typing his outrage.
$(0335; LRC-3) JESS THIS ISN'T FUCKING FUNNY I'M GOING TO REPORT YOU FOR THIS
Jenn's response was fairly nonplussed.
#(0335; LRC-4) The cameras this time.
He climbed to the bottom. He was going to ignore her and send an allscan alert out. Animal resources would resolve this.
What if this is a prank? What if they punish me? What if I fell for it? He thought, grasping at the open wound on his head for the first time.
Doesn't hurt to check first.
The tech up-arrowed on his terminal and began anew.
$print output camera[All]
Camera feeds did appear. The wrong ones. Blue-overall's mouth was agape as a mix of moving images flooded his peripherals.
#(0340; LRC-4) Let me know if I missed anything important.
She hadn't, he noted.
My house? My wife's office. The park she likes to walk on the way back from the metro. The fucking baby monitor. For fuck's sake the street camera's above my mother's home!
He watched his son writhe peacefully in his sleep. This was bad, worse than the movies. He considered it all before replying.
$(0342; LRC-3) What do u want Jess?
#(0342; LRC-4) I am not Jess. But I will be in a few hours, so I need your compliance now.
$(0343; LRC-3) I can't do anything from here. Please, I'll try but I can't do much!
It was a lie, and the flickering keystrokes on the end of the line didn't fall for it.
#(0344; LRC-4) 1500 West Hopedale Road. Apartment 26A.
#(0344; LRC-4) Wife walks with her headphones in. Really likes Caddi Caine's newest album.
#(0344; LRC-4) Son; he's very cute. Wife is going to surprise you later: he just spoke his first word.
He was crushed. They'd won, whoever this was had him controlled.
#(0345; LRC-4) Would you like to know what it was? Or should I wait?
He typed back frantically. A father fearing for his child's life over anything else.
$(0345; LRC-3) what do u WANT?
#(0346; LRC-4) Attenuation.
#(0346; LRC-4) You already did it. Keep the gain at max.
#(0346; LRC-4) Continue everything as normal. Tell no one.
He panicked. What if there was an inspection?
#(0346; LRC-4) When Dan inspects, manufacture the data. Packet by packet. I know you can. I read your thesis.
The doctor squinted, curious at the work the attacker had put into this.
$(0347; LRC-3) What if I mess up?
#(0347; LRC-4) You'll never hear your baby's first word in person.
#(0347; LRC-4) I will be watching. I will be listening. I will know if you report this. Get to it. You have work to do.
$(0348; LRC-3) who are you?
The hollow blinks on the text cursor on the screen was the only reply.
His terror was interrupted by the pumping, buzzing glissando of the antenna refocusing. The familiar clicking and mechanical susurration carried itself to his ears again. The right timing, on schedule. The unnerving reminder of his double captivity.
The handshake completed; the signal strength at full gain.
###NETWORK RECONNECTED###