TWENTY

"Sir we have a problem…" The hulking synthetic man's attention was now alerted to another console across the room. He scrambled across to the other side, sending a chair crashing into a nearby holo screen projector.

"We don't have problems on this base," Mr. Synthetic said. "It's your job to make sure we don't."

"I know, sir," said a particularly scrawny crewman named Clip. "I'm trying, but—"

"Trying to what?"

"There's something leeching data from our system."

Mr. Synthetic glanced back at the holo-image of Kane on display in the middle of the control room. The one-eyed man smirked and asked, "Everything okay, chief?"

Mr. Synthetic turned to rush back to the holo-call, but Clip grabbed him by the arm. Such a grab would normally be grounds for extermination, but Clip had a coy look in his eyes.

"Keep them talking," he said. "Pretend we're having problems."

Mr. Synthetic nodded and rushed back to the call.

"What are you doing to our systems?" He barked.

"Systems?" Kane asked. "Which ones? Reproductive?"

"For every smart answer you give me, that's one more finger I'm cutting off before I kill you."

"Gross." Kane winced, then thought for a second. "Wait, my fingers, or yours?"

"That's two," Mr. Synthetic said, glancing up at Clip, who held up a finger of his own.

Keep him talking for one more minute.

Mr. Synthetic gave him a subtle nod of acknowledgement.

"Whatever you're trying to do," Mr. Synthetic said, "It won't work. This station is heavily firewalled."

"Oh, you're on a station?" Kane asked.

Mr. Synthetic wanted to kick himself for that little info slip, but played it off as worthless information.

"Congratulations." He groaned. "You're the greatest detective in the universe."

"Actually, it's a multiverse," Kane said.

Mr. Synthetic wasn't sure where that comment came from and didn't care to debate it. He put on a faux frantic face and shouted off-screen. "Cut it off! Break the connection!"

He might have worried someone would take him seriously, but he made it clear the demand was a ploy by shouting it directly at the nearest wall.

Clip, who was sitting on the complete opposite side of the room, played along by shouting urgently.

"I can't!" He was still smirking while he worked away at his control panel.

"Shut the whole station down if you have to!" Mr. Synthetic let out a desperate grunt and rushed off screen a second time, pretending to be panicking but actually just curious about what the hell Clip was up to. He leaned down to his side and put a hand on his shoulder.

"Almost done," Clip said.

"Done with what?" Mr. Synthetic asked. "It better be good."

"You'll see in three, two, one…" He tapped one final button on his controls, and half the systems on the room shut down.

* * *

Of the many wonders Talia was capable of performing—including but not limited to hacking personal implants, causing battleship weaponry to misfire, and plain-old blowing human's minds—riding long-range data streams was perhaps the most fun.

Most times, when she was transmitting herself between devices, it was instantaneous. When traveling long distances though, that was a different experience. She imagined it was on par with what human's called white water rafting.

Only this was through a river of brilliant light and data.

And she was moving at the speed of electromagnetic waves.

And she didn't have a raft.

It also happened in the blink of an eye, but her processing power allowed her to prolong the ride for recreational purposes.

Okay, maybe it wasn't quite the same, but it was enjoyable nonetheless.

As usual, she had only sent a small partition of herself for the breaking-and-entering routine. That way, the rest of her could safely hang back in the Odin and report to the others. Data traps weren't that common, but she preferred to play things safe. Besides, she liked hanging out and quipping with the Odin crew.

The part of her programming that Talia had dedicated to the hack job smashed into the station's firewall like a mounted rider plowing straight into a castle wall. She hadn't encountered anything this sophisticated in a long time.

"Heavy resistance," she reported to Arissa. "Standby."

Throttling just another couple percent of herself into the proverbial castle wall, she busted through it without a problem. Inside, though, she found only a glowing maze of data bricks. At least it was progress. She started transmitting things she learned as she explored the endless halls and chambers.

So far, it was nothing valuable. Everything was too tightly guarded. Most of what she learned had to be done through inference of other facts. She confirmed it was a space station based on the absence of any links to engine systems. Its emergency backup batteries had only been through one charging cycle, likely just a test. That meant it also had a stable power system and never went down. Oh, it also had an onboard sewage-treatment plant, so it was pretty huge.

Back in the day, Talia might have reported this information back, verbatim. Not only did she find it fascinating, but she felt a little pride in her deductive reasoning. Now, having spent enough time around humans, she knew they couldn't care less about things.

"It's stationary, well-funded, and huge," she said to Arissa.

"Location?" Arissa whispered back.

"That would be the golden egg. Still searching. This place is surprisingly complex and well defended. I'll report back when I get something new."

Then, she experienced an encore of slamming into a castle wall at full force.

It was another firewall, this one stronger than the last. She borrowed another ten percent of herself from the Odin, riding the AI equivalent to white water rafting straight down the data stream, into the castle, through the halls, and straight into the wall.

She broke through but didn't find anything extra valuable. One chamber held communications systems, and she could see Kane's holographic transmission coming through. If not for the firewall, she would have taken that ride all the way into here, and even this wasn't deep enough.

She could count automatic doors—five hundred and thirty-eight.

She could check on the CO2 scrubber status—online.

Still, no coordinates. Usually, stations were in orbit around some kind of stellar body, so Talia shifted her focus from figuring out an exact coordinate to looking for a list of nearby planets.

"Hang on," Talia said. "I got this."

Even sifting through the list of nearest contacts was more difficult than she expected it would be.

Breaking through wall after wall, she kept dedicating more of her programming to the task of hacking the space station. She was nearly ninety-nine percent committed when she found what she needed.

The station was orbiting a metal-rich moon without an atmosphere. That narrowed it down, but not nearly enough.

Suddenly, the lights started going out all around her. It was slow, but if she lingered too long, she was going to get lost in the maze. She had to find a stellar body name. After some digging, she got what she was looking for and instantly transmitted it back to her friends.

A moment later, every light in the castle maze went dark.

She was cut off from the Odin.

Cut off from everything.

* * *

Jack stood back and marveled at how cohesive the crew had become. Kane kept Mr. Synthetic busy with ease while glancing perfectly inconspicuous glances at Arissa for updates on Talia's progress. He couldn't hear what Arissa was saying but could tell she was in tight communication with their AI, who Jack was beginning to think of as their MVP.

Then, of course, everything went straight to Hell.

Mr. Synthetic went off-screen, returned, smirked like the devil, then shut off his transmission.

"What was that about?" Kane said. "I didn't like that look."

"What did we get?" Jack asked, stepping in from the sideline of the operation.

"Not sure yet," Arissa said. "Talia? Did you pull it off?"

There was no answer.

"Talia?"

"That can't be good," Jack said.

"It's not," Kane replied, rushing to Arissa and shouting Talia's name a few times. "Talia, if this is a prank, it's not funny." Still nothing. He snapped his one-eyed gaze to Arissa. "What happened? What did she say?"

"Nothing," Arissa said. "It was a tough firewall, but she said she had it under control, and now…" Arissa glanced down at her screen. "Look at this."

The others gathered around. Jack read the word out loud.

"Novella? What does that mean?"

"It's a short novel," Kane said.

"I doubt that's what she meant," Arissa said, punching the name into the Odin's database. A holo-image of a small moon appeared. "It has to be Mr. Synthetic's location, but this doesn't say anything about a space station in orbit."

"So, they're off the grid," Jack said. "Sounds like bad guy behavior to me. How about you guys?"

"Well, this changes things, doesn't it?" Arissa asked.

"How so?" Jack asked.

"We were trying to get information and find a way out of this mess. But now, I assume Talia is trapped on their system."

"And that means we can't run away from the danger," Kane said. "We have to go straight for them to get her back."

"Sounds heroic," Jack said. "But, I guess that's kind of our thing now, isn't it?"

"Just logic," Kane replied. "She's saved my life, all of our lives. More times than I can count."

"Well that's not saying much."

"What?"

"Nothing," Jack said. "Continue."

Kane replied with a suspicious one-eyed look, like he was piecing together the exchange after the fact. Arissa interrupted before he could.

"Alright. It's planning time. How are we gonna pull this one off?"

"Same way we broke into the Gunder," Jack said. "Oh, wait. Talia was pretty clutch in that one. Come to think of it, she's clutch in everything. Can we even do anything without her?"

"I don't know," Kane said. "Do you even remember how to fly?"

"I'm serious. Without her hacking our enemies we don't have much going for us."

"Then we give Mr. Synthetic what he wants," Eden said, stepping deeper into the room. "Me."

"It's a fun idea," Jack said. "But I'm pretty sure he's wise to the old prisoner routine."

"It's more than that," Kane said, staring off into space a little. "We would just be doing what we're told."

"Seems out of character," Arissa said.

"Then we'll be mean about it."

"To be clear," Eden said. "I'm not suggesting you actually hand me over."

"Yeah. Bait and switch," Jack said. "I figured. Which also means Mr. Synthetic will have figured too. Probably already has and we're not even there yet."

"Then we'll bait, switch, and switch again," Eden said.

"Sure," Jack replied. "Whatever that means."

Arissa punched a few commands into her console.

"Looks like we have about eight hours travel time to figure it out. Is that enough?"

"It'll have to be," Jack said, sitting down in the pilot's seat. "Here we go."

He grabbed the controller, moved the twin sticks forward, and the Odin accelerated off into the vast dark of space.