“Is everyone okay?” Chalto asked as he stepped inside the ship’s galley, where some of the passengers were huddled together worriedly.
“We’re okay,” one of the eiraxin attendants replied shakily, “but Adjunct Xing’che and her aide Uht’ra were still aboard the station when the attack happened.”
“I’m sure they are safe,” Chalto said reassuringly to the woman.
His words seemed to calm the room slightly, and he was about to move on to check on others when a male eiraxin spoke up.
“Representative Chalto, who attacked us, and why?”
“I don’t know, but I plan on finding out.”
Telling the eiraxins who the perpetrators were wouldn’t serve anyone. It would only cause more panic. He chose to keep that information to himself and had ordered the bridge crew to do the same. After meeting with survivors, he made his way to the bridge once again, making sure everyone was holding up. When he arrived, the captain was conversing quietly with another member of the crew.
Chalto waited until the man finished his conversation and came over to speak with him.
“How many didn’t make it back?” Chalto asked the borganian captain.
“Ten people are unaccounted for. Only two of them were borganian, the rest were from the eiraxin delegation.”
“And the ship?” Chalto asked, not wanting to think about the death of the people he had been responsible for. Even the t’uk captain’s death only brought him a modicum of joy. The universe was a better place now that he and his crew were gone.
When Captain Kaelar attacked, Chalto had assumed they would be destroyed along with the station. It was pretty obvious what the man was doing when he targeted the station’s shielded section after it couldn’t damage his ship directly
“The landing strut is fused to the deck since it was outside the shield during the attack. It is causing the ship to list slightly. There is a danger that the ship could fall over if the station’s gravity comes back online, so we will need to keep an eye on that. There are no other major issues to report. Our borganian shields had no problem defending against the patrol vessel’s weapons, so our scientists and engineers can be praised for that. I wouldn’t want to test them against an actual warship, however.”
Chalto burbled in agreement.
“Are comms still offline?” The moment the t’uk vessel attacked, the station went into emergency lockdown, cutting off their connection to the station’s comm array and the outside universe.
“I’m afraid so. I think the AI might have been knocked offline as well, because it is no longer responding to commands,” the captain confirmed. “And it’s even worse than that.”
He pulled up an image showing the hangar. “Those doors aren’t opening anytime soon, and there is too much debris floating around to risk sending the crew out there in suits to try and cut the vessel free. Even if we could, I don’t think we have the right tools for the job. Something like this will require a shipyard. I would say we are in luck, but” he gestured to the damage.
Chalto nodded. Captain Jacob would not be happy with the lockdown or the damage. He looked at the large hangar doors, and all the holes melted through them from the t’uk’s energy weapons. The damage spread made no sense unless Captain Kaelar had been aiming to seal the doors. He still didn’t understand why the t’uk captain had been so adamant on getting his hands on Adjunct Xing’che to the point that he would fire on a representative’s vessel. It was insanity.
“Can the crew separate the landing strut without leaving the vessel?”
The captain shook his head slightly. “We’re at the mercy of the station owner.”
Chalto was afraid of that. The entire bridge crew had watched as the station fought back against the patrol vessel, its weapons completely ineffective against the ship. That was until two smaller vessels rammed into the side of the t’uk patrol ship, knocking out its shields. Watching the void cannons tear chunks out of the vessel was reminiscent of watching a borganian infant try to eat its first tuber—horrifying, but effective.
“We should have enough supplies to last us until the judicator arrives, but have your crew do a full inventory. If we have to ration, I would like to know sooner rather than later.”
The captain nodded in acknowledgement.
Before they could discuss other matters, one of the crew spoke up. “Captain, there is movement in the hangar.”
“Put it on the main screen,” the captain said.
Three of the tracked drones rolled into the hangar, followed by a suited figure. The suited figure stopped, looked around, then continued approaching their ship, unconcerned about the debris floating through the air and bouncing off their suit.
“Is he insane?” someone on the bridge asked.
Chalto didn’t believe so.
The figure stopped just shy of the shield and waited.
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“I believe they wish to talk,” Chalto said as the captain just stared at the figure, unsure of what to do. “Lower the shields, and I will meet them at the airlock.”
“Is that wise, representative?”
“No, but I don’t believe we have any other choice.”
The captain nodded once again. “I’ll have two of the security people meet you there.”
Chalto was about to argue, but he stopped himself. If the figure were Captain Jacob, he would likely be upset. A bit of backup wouldn’t be unappreciated.
When Chalto arrived at the airlock, two huge borganians waited there, glaring at the figure inside the sealed compartment.
Every time Chalto saw the hulking guards, he wished he hadn’t been the runt of his family. Then again, being smaller had its advantages.
“You can open the airlock,” he said.
As the door hissed open, the guards stepped back, and a figure stepped into the room. The helmet of the individual swept over the two hulking figures with barely a glance, then landed on Chalto.
***
Holy fuck! Those dudes are the size of silverback gorillas.
Probably just as strong if he had to guess, not that Jacob was concerned about them. He turned away from the guards and focused on representative Chalto. At least he assumed it was the representative based on how he was dressed.
Jacob didn’t have enough experience with whatever species the man was to say for certain.
On his way down here, he had considered how to handle the situation. He was angry, but anger wouldn’t be helpful right now.
“I don’t suppose you are willing to release your illegal lockout?” Jacob asked.
“It was hardly illegal, Captain. I am well within my rights as an Astryx representative to issue such restrictions. As for the lockout, even if I could recall it,” the representative rumbled in its low voice, “I would have to decline.”
Jacob had expected as much after reviewing all of Chalto’s communications that ran through the station, but his anger still flared at the refusal.
“I figured as much,” Jacob said sagely, “but the last time I checked, you were an Astryx representative, not a member of the Alliance, which the credentials claimed. At least that’s what you claimed, which is why I’ve disabled the station AI to prevent you from issuing more illegal commands. In my capacity as Head of Station Services, I will also impound your vessel until those credentials can be vetted. You will be given time to gather your people and provisions, and then everyone aboard will be moved to a safe section of the station to wait. Which reminds me, what is a judicator and why are they coming to this station?”
Chalto’s eyes widened slightly. “You pulled my comm logs? Those are supposed to be secure.”
Under normal circumstances, Jacob suspected the comm logs were secure. Unfortunately, he had been forced to cobble together the new comm system to work with the station’s outdated systems, and certain adjustments had to be made to make everything function correctly. One of those adjustments was having the AI dismantle the comm array’s encryption scheme so it could incorporate it into its own outbound comm signals.
Jacob understood how the ability to read all outbound calls might be important, so he had saved the AI’s efforts to his own storage aboard the station and spent some time creating a simple software tool to run the encrypted comm logs through when time allowed. It was his first true effort at understanding the AI’s programming. It was a lot more difficult than he had imagined, but he did manage to create a working application that made his sad attempts at programming as a hobby back on Earth look pitiful in comparison.
He would have had the station AI monitor the program, but apparently, communications were considered a protected right under Concord law. He actually agreed with Concord on that matter, which was a weird thing to consider. Unfortunately, he was in no position to discard such a helpful tool when he had so few and so many possible enemies.
Jacob didn’t mention any of that to the representative, however. “Please answer the question.”
The representative’s throat rumbled in displeasure before speaking. “A judicator is not actually part of the Astryx judicial system, despite their title. They are special agents trained to assess greater threats to the galactic union and eliminate them if need be.”
“This isn’t even Astryx space,” Jacob said in annoyance. “What right do you or the Astryx have to come out here and tell me how I can or can’t act?”
Chalto didn’t look fazed at all by Jacob’s argument. “The dead zone may be a lawless wasteland not technically under Astryx control, but that doesn’t mean threats to the Astryx can’t come from here. To turn a blind eye to that possibility would be idiotic. Nobody wants a repeat of what happened with the Concord Imperium, but I imagine I don’t need to tell you about that, considering the ship parked in the shipyard.”
That is not at all what Jacob had expected to hear, except the Concord part. Everything seemed to lead back to the damn eiraxins.
“I’ve taken Adjunct Xing’che into custody.”
Chalto jerked back in surprise. “On what charges?” he demanded.
“Murder. I watched her kill her assistant.”
The unflappable man seemed flustered by the statement.
“Why would she do something like that?”
“I’m afraid that is station business. We could discuss it further if and when the lockout is lifted. Until then, I suggest you get packing.”
Jacob turned to leave, but stopped as Chalto held out one of his hands.
“What about the others from my ship?”
While it might give Jacob a small bit of satisfaction to deny the man information on the adjunct’s arrest, he wasn’t cruel enough to keep the man in the dark on whether or not his people were alive.
“There were no other survivors from your crew. The bodies will remain in the station morgue until you are ready to depart. If your credentials are verified, it could take years to fix the damage to the hangar, so you may need to find alternative transport off the station, because you are no longer welcome here.”
That wasn’t entirely true. Jacob was pretty sure that if he prioritized repairs on the hangar doors, they could be operational again in a relatively short amount of time. He wasn’t going to do that for several reasons.
The first being that he didn’t owe these people anything. They docked at the station without his consent, threw their weight around, and then they locked him out, preventing him from stopping Franky. He just knew that was going to be a mess. And now he had to plan for how to deal with this judicator, and he doubted that crashing a few repair ships into them was going to cut it a second time around.
The AI had shut the comm system down during the attack, but Jacob had made sure it stayed off. Without communications, Chalto and his people couldn’t call for help or tell this judicator what happened. He didn’t want to give them any reason to accelerate their arrival. A lot was about to happen, and the most important thing Jacob needed was time.
Even though Jacob was a digitized version, he couldn’t be in multiple places at once, at least not yet. Well, he probably could if he could find more AI cores, but the thought of creating a copy of himself gave him the creeps. He didn’t want to end up as some weirdo who interacted and argued with copies of himself that slowly became slightly different from each other. That sounded exhausting.
Since he couldn’t be in multiple places at once, he sucked down what little pride he had and decided to ask the others for help. They were in the same boat as him after all.