Gideon020 Wrote:While Triax will never match some of the Big Name Fen in advanced cybernetics technology, the company in 2020 announced as the first step of their Transhuman Evolution Initiative their intention on advancing hardtech nanotechnology and computer technology to allow for the digitisation and uploading of a human mind into a mimetic computer 'cyberbrain' and while Triax has not yet attained this goal, they have made great strides in cybernetic life-support systems for the human brain.

Now, in 2021, Triax Corporation continues to seek the future, as they now begin the Neo-Sapient Uplift Project to advance genetic engineering so that they can uplift an animal species to sapience, proving true to their motto.

Gideon020 Wrote:[3:] The Model-20 is the only one that seems to avoid the whole 'Ghost Talker' problem, but just in case make sure that there is the option for any AI's that manifest to be removed from the system for the customer. We need AI's for the Corporate Citizen program and the TEI.

I trust in our memory wiping systems to have been effective in ensuring total, permanent, amnesia in the former Ms. Trackman, but make sure we don't release pictures or say her name in case she sees any press releases, just in case.

Silus

Fromarahtrackman@triaxinternal.secure.fen
To:[REDACTED]@stellvia.lib

Quote:"Okay," Anika began, "He's got something of an online presence so all I had to do was track him for a bit then get a feel for the sort of things he'd be interested in. Once I've got that, I can then send him a spoofed email containing a legitimate-looking link that redirects through an attack site I've set up that exploits some known vulnerabilities in document readers, web-apps and the like."

"Spear Phishing," said Jet.

"Exactly!" She paused to look smug for a moment. "Since no corporation in existance custom-codes their entire software stack, I can profile what they're using and there's a big list of known vulnerabilities, so all I have to do is catch on of them to get an application of my own to run. So, now that I have an application of my own running on his system I can trick it to think there's an update for a device driver and edit its yum sources so it'll pull down a package from a repository of my own while the user watches a corporate training video I linked to. "

"You hijacked it then? Asked Ford.

"Not yet," she shook her head. " Whoever runs their IT department isn't a moron - they've configured the system to keep me from loading unsigned kernel modules so I can't fully root the system yet. But.." she smiled "...He clearly thinks his users are. He's set their systems to auto-check for updates every day, then install them on the next shutdown and restart. But he fucked up with that too because that script has to be run with root privileges, and because it's accessing and installing our package as root, I make any changes I want to his system."

Ford nodded, hiding how far over her head it was going.

"Now," Anika raised a finger. "They use an extensible firmware interface system with secureboot enabled so if the firmware detects anything strange in the OS bootloader it locks up solid so I have to do something about that. There's a known bug in this particular implementation that actually lets me change the platform key if I can get it to run code in kernel mode. I can do that by attacking the hardware of the system itself so it includes a little malicious code in the firmware of the graphics card that makes the switch. And that can be done as part of the update."

An almost impish gleam shone in her eyes. The underspace was going to take notice of a stunt like this. A sort of graduation

"Once you touch the hardware itself, you can do anything."

Jet looked momentarily uncomfortable, being reminded of something years earlier she thought she'd forgotten.

"So, I tell the kernel to unload then reload the signed graphics card module right before it shuts down, which allows me to pass my code through the kernel and change the platform key to one which will allow me to load my own kernel while all he notices is a slightly longer shutdown than normal."

She glanced at both of them, feeling a giddy thrill race through her body.

"The next time it starts up, the changed platform key tricks secureboot into thinking its loading a clean OS every time - it can't possibly fail now and I can load whatever I want inside the kernel and I can run it as root user too so now I basically own the entire system, drive contents and all."

She allowed herself one last triumphal bite of cheesecake, before placing the plate down beside her becrumbed computer terminal. There was a whole stack of plates beside it, mixed with the occasional cupcake wrapper. A dollop of cream had congealed on her desk, with some notepapers scattered alongside it.

"The only thing I needed to know what that you could control his computer, and get stuff on and off it," said Ford, gruffly.

Anika crossed her arms across her chest, pouting. "Yeah, but if I just told you that, you might think it was easy."

It'd taken her a bakery's worth of eaten cake to do it. And then some.

"So what've you got?" Jet asked. The cyber leant in over the terminal, inspecting Anika's screen.

"Anything on his harddrive and anything he has access to on the network." said Anika, her chest inflating with pride. "All inbound and outbound mail before it actually gets anywhere. And,most importantly, his location."

Ford placed her gloved hand on the android's shoulder.

"Well, if anything in there counts as 'evidence' you can keep the 10k bonus all to yourself."

-----

They'd all gathered down in the Silky-Doll, settling themselves onto sumptuous couches in a luxurious penthouse, hidden deep within the asteroid.

Daryl opened the proceedings, settling herself back into a soft, pale-pink couch."So what did Scott say to Sylia?"

Jet stood in front of a monitor, displaying the offical bounty notifications, and whatever intelligence they had on .

"If we want the big payoff, we play by the same rules as everyone else." Jet answered. "So if we do it as the Knight Sabers with my troubleshooter hat on, we get the usual Great Justice pay." She took a breath. ""For the Knight Sabers it'd be easy enough to grab a few of them. But grabbing just one as ourselves gets us a lot more money - especially once costs are taken care of."

"Go with the money," said Kotono, leaning forward off her chair, an avaricious gleam in her eyes. "That's too much money to turn down."

Ford stood in front of a window looking out on a painting of a city landscape. "It could pay off the new Dragon Wagon 2 for a start, which earns us all a lot more money in the long run."

Kotono glared at her. "Shouldn't we decide what to do with our own shares?"

Daryl sighed. "You are shameless."

"Besides.." Anika added "As far as the public are concerned, the Knight Sabers would be doing it Pro-Bono Publico. It'd really give our reputation a boost, especially after Genaros, which might get the Sabers more paying jobs."

"Fair point," said Daryl, nodding. She turned to the dancer sitting beside her. "And even you can't deny Quincy paid us more for one mission than Great Justice did for five."

Kotono crossed her arms across her chest, settling back into the chair with a dark scowl on her face.

"We'll vote on it then." said Jet "Do we want more money, for more difficulty? Or do we want easy money, and a reputation boost that might earn us more in the future."

"Don't forget," Ford added. "Bringing one in by ourselves will be good for our reputation too. For Frigga, for Survvial Shot - for anything else we do."

-------

Showtime.

Ford closed her eyes, leaning over the steering wheel of her truck. If she kept it parked there much longer, the local security people would start to get suspicious. Gated rock communities were always the hardest places to get people out of.

The easiest way was sometimes to trick them into letting you in.

Anika's voice tickled through her ear-bead "Okay Ford, as far as he knows the security manager's arranged for him to be brought on out to a secure location. She's told him who's going to contact him."

"Right," Ford answered. "I'll send my email. Jet, you ready?"

"I'm inside. I haven't been spotted."

The cyber's voice had the faint digital echo common to all synthetic vox communications.

"Kotono?"

"We're at the rendezvous outside their security zone. Waiting for you."

She leant over to the laptop computer sitting on the passenger seat, and clicked Send. The email would arrive within moments, once Anika'd modified his system to call it genuine. She sat back into the drivers seat, starting the engine to be ready.

------

He'd known his normal life had come to an end the moment the richest son of a bitch in Fenspace had placed one of the largest bounties in history on his head. The followup from the Forge had just been icing on the cake. The company'd moved him to Albermuth within hours, to keep their secrets from leaking out. They moved him between lab and home on a secure transport. They may have been planning to silence him for good.

And now he'd been followed. It was all there in black and white on his computer terminal. A security officer had sent him the message- confirmed genuine by software on his machine - letting him know that a courier would make contact.

He was being moved to another safehouse.

It made him wonder why they didn't just do the same thing to him. It might've seemed neater. Then again, his expertise was of a sort not easy to come by. He was, they assured him, much too valuable to lose. So when the message from the courier arrived, it hadn't been unexpected. It made him sick to his stomach, but he'd everything packed and ready to go. It sat on a bed he still hadn't gotten used to sleeping on.

He took a deep breath. The paranoia was the worst part. Anyone could be a bounty hunter. The people who drove him to work. The building superintendant....

The phone rang, causing him to launch clear out of the seat. His hands scrambled to

"Mister Pinkerton. It's me. Larry. I'm waiting outside."

Larry was a woman? Poor guy, he thought.

"Five minutes?" he said, swallowing a lump.

"Not five minutes, now. The longer I wait, the more time scumbag mandalorians have to catch up with me."

"Alright. Alright."

"Good."

The line went dead. He felt sweat begin to prickle across his brow, a hot flush of adrenaline racing through his veins as he slowly turned his head to face the windows, then the suitcases waiting by the door.

Something slammed hard into the balcony outside, shaking the floor under his feet. He glanced towards the window to see a figure standing outside, silhouetted by the artificial sun. She stepped clean through the glass, shattering it into small diamond pieces.

"Micheal Pinkerton?"

Her voice was cold and callous as she stepped into the room, glass grinding under solid steel feet.

"Oh Fuck me!"

He stumbled backwards, falling hard onto his arse. She stepped forward, looming over him.

"You know what happens to rapists like you?"

She aimed her metal finger right at him

"Rapist?" He gulped. Who? What? He hadn't ever.... He held his hands up ."Hey, hey now. I never touched anyone."

She towered over him as he scrambled desperately back towards the door. He considered trying the security button but she was standing between himself and the button. Her body was covered in white armour, her face obscured by a metal visor. He could see his own reflection flow across the surface of the metal.

"I've dealt with people like you before. People who treat people's minds as their toys. People who violate the very soul of a human being without thought to the consequences. Well... your life as it has been is over."

There was a cold and deathly certainty to her tone, reinforced by a single oversized pistol she'd drawn from a holster strapped to her hip.

"You've got to take me alive!" he pleaded.

"You don't know how thankful you should be that I don't. We already know everything. We rooted your PC a long time ago. We have all your files. We have everything we need to know to pass sentence, and the sentence is death."

She clicked the safety off. He raised his hands eye above his head. Something warm and moist had begun to spread between his legs.

"You can't kill me. I was just doing my job. Jesus Christ lady I'm not a bad man. I don't deserve this shit!"

His voice echoed back at him off the walls mockingly.

"You just lost all right to talk to me as a civilised human being." The mask cracked just a touch, revealing a hard fury beneath. For the first time he sensed that something had been an act - but he couldn't be sure what. "Tell you what, Pinkerton. I like a little sport. I'll give you a one minute head start."

She was toying with him. Nothing was stopping her from killing him right then and there beyond some twisted sense of malice. Malice or not, he'd take every chance he had. How many times had he seen it in fiction? The villain's hubris lets the hero escape from certain doom?

"Fifty-nine, Fifty eight......" She began to count as he scrambled back to his feet. Then paused, like her train of thought had been completely thrown from the tracks. "What fucking problem?" she yelled.

Pinkerton was standing, facing her, when he heard the whine of a jet engine rushed through the smashed window. It wasn't hard for him to recognise the Mandalorian armour, or the stun-gun aimed right at his head.

"Micheal Pinkerton? You're worth a lot of money to me."

The Mandalorian and the woman seemed looked at each other for a moment, surprised by each other's presence.

"What the fuck are you doing here?" they asked each other, in unison.

Micheal Pinkerton decided not to wait until the answered each their mutual question. He was out the door and running, leaving his suitcase behinds, hoping beyond hope that this would be the break that'd see him to safety.

-------

"We got a problem."

That was Daryl's voice.

"Tell me about it." Ford groaned. She'd seen the Mandalorian. She even knew who he was. The asshole.

"Bailey's just showed up with a cruiser demanding access to arrest Pinkerton."

Ford muttered a curse under her breath as she slumped over the steering wheel. "I really wish you hadn't told me about that," the bounty hunter deadpanned.

She forced her attention to the building's front door, waiting for Pinkerton to emerge. Movement far above caught her eye. She looked up just in time to see the Mandalorian streak out the window. Pinkerton stumbled through the front door simultaneously.

If he got him first, all their hard work would go to waste. Ford'd already gotten the truck in gear, ready to make the intercept - but it'd take far too long to get over there.

The Mandalorian swung down towards him, ready to make a high-speed tackle. Jet Jaguar raced after him, accelerating with a turbine scream from her engines into a power dive. Mandalorian and combat cyborg collided in the air less than a meter from the target. They both tumbled to the ground, Pinkerton looking bewildered at them for a moment as they skidded along the road. Pinkerton stumbled, caught himself and kept running towards her truck, thinking his lucky stars.

Ford cursed under her breath.

"Over here!" she yelled at Pinkerton, beckoning him with her left arm. "Get in the back!"

He used the side of the truck to stop himself, taking a moment to stumbled around the back. Ford saw the Mandalrian get to his feet a moment before a single sweep of a white armoured leg sent him tumbling. He kicked at Jet's face, aiming his handgun at her. She smashed it out of his hand, sending it skittering across the road.

Ford heard the tailgate of her truck swing open, feeling Pinkerton clamber into the back of truck. He scrambled along the bed as the spring door slammed shut and locked itself.

"Hey! Hey!" he banged on the glass divider."You want to start moving?"

"Yeah sure," Ford answered, letting the truck roll forward. "You want to put those handcuffs on?"

"Handcuffs?"

It was the realisation she lived for. That beautiful expression on their faces as they realised they were going to live, before realising that the whole thing had been one big setup to get them into the truck without a fight.

She fetched a printout of the bounty slip from the glove compartment, along with her identification, pressing them both against the dividing window for his benefit.

"Aggravated assault, conspiracy, violations of personal dignity.... you've been a bad man Mister Pinkerton." She saw it across his face, the open mouthed moment when it all came crashing home. "Ford Sierra, Bounty Hunter."

He swallowed, still staring at her, his eyes wide. "You bitch. You fucking bitch!"

Pinkerton seemed ready to cry, all the colour draining from his face.

"Oh, talk to your mom with that mouth?" she teased with a smirk.

Her phone began to ring. She had no doubts about who the caller would be. She let it buzz on the dashboard, ringing once, then twice, then three times before she finally decided to pick it up, pinning in between her ear and her shoulder.

"Hey Ford, I know that's you and your partner.... I hope you know that's aiding and abetting?"

And he was just as pissed as she expected him to be.

"All's fair in love and war," she answered, hanging up before he could get the last word.

Especially when there were a hundred G's on the line. It wasn't the first time they'd met, after all. But Pinkerton was her prisoner now. Handcuffed and in secure custody. There were rules against stealing other hunter's prisoners. Ford put the icing on the cake by waving at the Mandalorian as she drove by him.

He answered with a middle finger.

Now all she had to do was get out of Albermuth. What she saw coming down the street made her feel it was going to be a little harder than she'd expected. Jet would have to make her own way out.

Not a problem for her.

"Hey, Ford. We've a new problem!" It was Anika's voice in her ear. Ford didn't need to be told what it was.

The commotion had awakened the local security forces. Three of the local patrol cars had just come racing around the corner, with lights and sirens and everything, along with local cops with local guns who wouldn't be afraid to shoot a non-resident disturbing the peace.

Albermuth wasn't known for being friendly to Bounty Hunters.

-------

Daryl sat in the Pilot's seat of the Dragon Wagon II, trying to ignore the boy being unsubtle about stealing glances from behind the sensor console.

"The Bailey's ship is moving," said Mackie. They're trying to get between us and the entrance."

"I'm going to move us closer."

She triggered the maneuvering jets with a nudge on the throttle, easing the ship forward towards the entrance to the asteroid.

"They're hailing us," Anika announced.

"Put it through."

"This is the BSS Praetorian. We've been hired to act as security for Albermuth. One of their residents is being kidnapped by an unknown actor. Any attempt to interfere with the rescue will be met with force."

The voice was flat and dispassionate.

"The motherfucking swine!" Daryl punched the panel in front of her, before switching open a return channel "Hey you cock-sucking BSS pricks. I bet you came here for the same reason we did and now that we beat you to it you cunts are switching sides, aren't you? You're scum! You're pathetic! You're....

"....jamming us now," Anika interrupted. "Gimme a minute to clear through it."

Kotono has begun to giggle behind her hand "You pissed them off so much they jammed us to shut you up. Daryl Haur is angry and unhinged again"

"Oh shut up!" Daryl snapped. "Those arseholes deserve it." She aimed her gloved finger at the bloated space cruiser hovering just outside.

"This is why people hated Grand Mal," Mackie murmured to himself, trying not to look at Daryl proudly wearing the fashion of her faction

"Jamming's gone!" Anika announced.

"Tell Ford," Daryl ordered. "Let them know."

Anika opened a channel "Hey, Ford. We've a new problem!"

"Tell me about it," Ford's voice answered, her tone gruff. Anika thought she could hear the squealing of tyres in the background.

"The B-Men have switched sides." said the android. "They're waiting for you by the main gate, blocking the exit."

There was a pause.

"I really wish you hadn't told me about that."

Daryl picked up the mic. "I've got an idea. But we have to time it right. How long will it take you to get to the gate?"

-----

Idea? Ford wondered. That didn't sound good. She'd gained a train of patrol cars racing behind her, a faint echo of the day she'd first run to orbit a half a life ago. Something about it brought a smile to her face. The pickup truck launched off a bump in the street before crashing down hard. A single lone hubcap spun off a wheel, clattering to a halt against the side of an old volkswagen.

"Three minutes," she broadcast back. It was a guess. But it made sense.

If they nabbed her, they grabbed Pinkerton. The rules governing Bounty Hunters were reasonably clear. Once a bounty was in a hunters custody, that was it. The bounty belonged to them. So long as the bounty didn't escape - in which case they were fair game for all once again.

It wasn't unheard of for some hunters to encourage a suspect's escape with the sole intention of stealing the bounty. Sure you could complain, but it was rarely easy to prove.

She swung the truck around a street corner, dodging a mother and child who'd just had their illusion of peaceful spaceborn community shattered in the rudest manner possible. A hard thump in the rear of the truck followed by a groan told her what her passenger thought of her driving. A beetle driver registered his disapproval with a wheeze from his car's horn.

Well, screw him. The Mandalorian was still out there somewhere to clean up if they got stopped.

Tyres squealed in protest as she hauled the pickup around another corner, clipping the bumper off a stopped car. She elected not to stop and exchange insurance details with the angry owner. She floored it, accelerating towards the pressure gate. The two-decade old truck roared along at triple-figure speeds, trailing black soot from the exhausts. The redneck who'd waved it had left his mark - even if she'd castrated the tow-hitch on day one, some quirks still lingered.

Rolling coal at full throttle triggered fire and smoke alarms all along her route. It served as encouragement to the local PD to just let her go.

The inner checkpoint offered as much resistance to her truck as Arthur Dent offered to a bulldozer. She kept her foot in it, barrelling down the entrance tunnel as barriers began to close as the automatic sequence was triggered. The inner doors slammed shut behind her, splitting the gap between the leading two police cars. The one remaining car squealed to a halt realising he was about to well and truly leave his jurisdiction. The truck accelerated further as air resistance dissapearred. Windows creaked as the air inside pressed to escape.

Life support switched to internal recirculation automatically.

The outer door was already beginning to open. She eased off a little, hoping it'd open far enough not to rip the top clean off the cabin. Yellow warnings lights pulsed, beams swinging around inside the tunnel, throwing bright sparks off both mirrors. A crack of open space had appeared at the bottom of the door, slowly expanding. She grit her teeth and raced on, aiming for the black.

The door passed inches overhead in one heartstopping instant. Moments later, the pickup truck hung in space, propelled by its own momentum away from the asteroid base. She clutched in and switched the transfer case to spaceflight mode. The sense of acceleration ceased as new physics took over.

Her eyes scanned around space outside, searching for the grappler ship that'd brought her there. All she was was the bulbous mass of a Bailey's Security Service cruiser, slowly hoving towards her with obvious intention.

It didn't even surprise her when the radio spoke.

"Dragon Wagon, this is BSS Praetorian. You will shut your engine down and hand Pinkerton over to us, or we will be forced to use force to stop you."

And kill the bounty? she wondered, glancing back at the man in the rear bed. It didn't take a genius to add two and two...

"Looks like your employers have abandoned you, Mike," she said.

The radio hissed to life once more.

"Hey Ford. On your left."

Bailey's were first on the draw. The Cruiser fired a burst of gunfire, bright and hot in open space. Tracers speared through the void. Ford saw the spear-shaped hull of the Dragon Wagon II accelerating over the horizon of the asteroid, quad engines burning bright.

Speed was its armour.

A few shots splashed off the hull, scorching fresh paint where they skimmed off. One gained purchase, shards of the heat shield spalling off.

That thing was still new!

"I'm on the Grapple!"

Anika's voice again. That really filled her with confidence. Again, the cruiser opened fire, most of its shots screaming wide of the mark. Hitting a ship moving across your guns at high speed was difficult at the best of times.

Ford saw both arms fold out from beneath the belly of the other Dragon Wagon. She turned her truck away from the accelerating Outlaw class, hoping to minimise the speed differential. Tracers spun by as their tracks converged, the cruciform thruster arrangement of the Dragon Wagon II filling all three of Dragon Wagon I's mirrors.

Behind it, the Bailey's cruiser turning to give chase. The Outlaw class ship was closing rapidly from behind, flashing tracers racing past. Its arms reached out towards her pickup truck.

"Hold on!" Anika warned

"Brace yourself!" Ford yelled.

Her passenger had nothing to hold on to.

The effect was like being rear-ended by a speeding locomotive. Both arms locked on with a hard crunch. Ford was rammed back into her seat, her neck twisting over the top of her headrest. Everything on the dashboard launched back towards her as the pickup was slammed forwards. The engine screamed momentarily, then stalled, dashboard giving the full Apollo 13 treatment as red warning lights lit up across the board.

Dizzied by the impact, she was aware of the pickup slowly rotating around her as it was drawn towards the hull of the ship above. Feeling ill, she braced herself on the steering wheel.

"You alright?" Anika's voice enquired.

"I'll live," Ford groaned.

"Hang on. We're going to have to accelerate pretty hard to get away."

Exhaling a sigh as her inner ear began to stabilise, she at last thought to check on her passenger. Pinkerton had hit the tailgate hard enough to knock him unconscious.

"This sucks." she said, closing her eyes.

-----

The grappler ship still smelled new. It had less than a hundred AU on its engines, after all. It was a soft and welcoming smell. Ford left Kotono tend to the injured Pinkerton. A dark bruise had spread across his forehead where it'd met stamped steel at high speed, leaving a fair dent in the metal. He'd have to be kept awake to make sure he didn't have a serious head injury.

Being knocked unconscious had already left him with a nasty concussion. It could easily prove fatal.

Ford chose to rest in her cabin instead. Already, she was totting it up in her head as she lay on her bed, subtracting the remaining payments on the grappler ship, then her estimate of the repairs to both it and her own truck, before dividing it between the group. It left them with less than she'd hoped. Technically, maybe less than if they'd worked it as a Knight Saber mission.

No big deal. She allowed herself to soak in the softness of the luxury bedding, glad they'd spent the money on a cabin upgrade rather than on weapons. Sleep threatened to overtake her, but she resisted. Pinkerton wasn't in Patrol custody yet. And the bounty wouldn't be in their bank account until he was.

A knock on her door destroyed any thoughts of sleep. She snapped awake, sitting upright.

"Yeah,"

Jet Jaguar opened the door, stepping inside before letting it close behind her. The smell of cooking food wafted in behind her - something tomato-y and sweet.

"You caught up?"

"Once Baileys stopped shooting and moved off." Jet grinned wryly at her. "Our friend's a bit pissed at me though."

Ford sighed, relaxing back into her pillow with her hands clasped behind her head. "Let him be. He's done that to me before."

"I got the computer," said Jet. "Hopefully it survived the trip through vacuum."

"We've got all his files anyway. That's just verification." She thought for a moment. "We'll see if it's enough for the bonus, but a hundred grand isn't bad for a week's work."

Ford closed her eyes, exhaling slowly through her nose. "It still isn't in the bank yet."

Jet leant back against the door folding her arms across her chest. "I need to talk to him anyway. To see if we've missed anything interesting."

"It's a half-hour to Kandor."

"Guys, There's a squadron of large ships on an intercept course, they'll meet us in five minutes."

Both of them looked at the speaker in the ceiling. Mackie'd just proved that Murphy always had different ideas. Both of them raced towards the nose of the ship, passing Daryl who'd abandoned her attempts at cooking, leaving the pot to boil over.

"What is it?" Ford demanded as she burst through the cockpit door.

Mackie turned back to face from the pilot's seat.

"I don't know what it is, but it's matching us for speed, on a perpendicular course."

Anika slipped herself back into her seat at the sensor console. It took her only a few moments to get a proper lock on the target.

"Those are Blackjacks," she said, drawing a fearful breath "Triax build them."

"Can we outrun them?" Ford snapped.

"Maybe." said Jet. Her attention seemed to momentarily leave the room "Our top speeds are close enough that if we turn to their heading they'll have a difficult time catching us before help can arrive.

"Already turning!" Mackie announced.

"What's on our course?" demanded Daryl.

"We'll pass within 2 AU of 37 Fides in 4 hours," Jet answered, taking only a heartbeat to check her own navigation program.

"There's one small problem with that," said Mackie and faint quiver of apprehension rising in his voice.. "Even on this course, they'll catch us up in three hours."

"Fuck," said Ford. It was an accurate summary of their feelings.

"I'll send Fides a message," said Anika, softly. "Let them know we'll need help."

It'd be a race to see which one caught up first.

-----

Micheal Pinkerton felt like throwing up. He wasn't sure if it was from the concussion throbbing inside his skull, or the horrible feeling that the rest of his life was going to be spent in a jail cell, alongside real criminals. Most of all, however, he felt utterly drained of energy. He'd sat himself on the bed in his otherwise empty cabin, taking a moment to gather his thoughts and reflect upon how utterly screwed his life was.

The door opened. A flash of anger twisted his face into a snarl as the armoured woman stepped inside. For the first time, she saw her face, blue eyes staring at him. It'd been an act - that much was obvious. Get him off balance. Get him to run. Get him to fall right into their arms without ever firing a shot.

He nearly did throw up.

"Just thought you should know," she said, her voice soft, but hoarse. Her tone was deliberately even and calm. "your friends sent a squadron of Blackjacks to make sure you don't talk to anyone. They'll catch us inside a hundred and fifty minutes."

He knew exactly what that meant. Death in hours. Or death after decades in prison for doing his job. He struggled to gauge her mood. She didn't seem outright angry. If anything, she looked tired - disappointed even.

"They think you already know too much." he answered, his eyes falling to the floor. "They'll kill you too."

"This ship's well armed. And I can take them on myself if I have to."

She spoke with such calm certainty, he had an inkling that it wasn't an idle boast. He had an inkling of who he was talking too. Nobody human could take on five bombers by themselves, but he doubted the person he was talking to was entirely human.

"We have all the information from your computers, and your network drives," she told him. "But there's always more to it than that." She placed her hands lightly on her hips for a moment, her gaze still fixed solidly on him. "The way I see it, you have two choices. You can keep quiet and hope your friends from Triax blow us out of the stars. Or you can save the Space Patrol and yourself a full interrogation and talk to me and my recorder here in a nice, comfortable cabin."

She paused, giving the implied threat weight. Her eyes stared straight through him, as if he wasn't even sitting there.

"So. What'll it be?"

------

Dartz Wrote:"Oh shut up!" Daryl snapped. "Those arseholes deserve it." She aimed her gloved finger at the bloated space cruiser hovering just outside.

"This is why people hated Grand Mal," Mackie murmured to himself, trying not to look at Daryl proudly wearing the fashion of her faction