Jacob popped into the apartment, then pinged the others, letting them know he had something important to discuss. Barry was the first to appear. The man gave him a shallow nod before sitting at the kitchen table and immediately burying his face in an interface window.
Jacob leaned in to see what the man was working on, because it looked like an extremely complex piece of machinery, but he couldn’t tell what it was at a glance. He really wanted to ask about it, but he could hold his curiosity until later.
Time dragged on, and Jacob kept checking a watch he made appear on his wrist. It had been over ten minutes since he sent the meeting invite, and Katherine still hadn’t shown up. He was about to ping her again when she finally flickered into existence, looking annoyed.
“This better be good, I was busy with something.”
Once again, Jacob was curious as to what his fellow abductees were up to. He squashed any idea of asking her upon seeing the glare she sent his way.
Maybe I woke her up?
He pushed those thoughts aside and cleared his throat. “Now that you’re here, we can get started.”
“Not that I don’t mind Franky’s absence,” Katherine said, “but if this is so important, shouldn’t everyone be here? Unless this is about him?” Her eyes gleamed at the possibility.
“Franky is gone,” Jacob replied curtly. He really didn’t want to go into details on how the man had managed to fool him and steal a spaceship. It was humiliating.
He should have realized Katherine wouldn’t let that statement go.
“Gone! How?” she asked, before turning defensive. “Did you kill him?”
“What?” Jacob asked. “Why would you think I killed him? I’m not even sure why that was the first thing that came to your mind. And why would you even care if I did?”
“I don’t care about him, but if you’re going to start killing us, I would really like to know,” she demanded.
Jacob threw his hands in the air in exasperation. “I didn’t kill Franky!”
“Franky transferred his consciousness to a data storage area aboard the transport. Then he stole it and departed the station,” Barry responded absently.
Jacob’s head jerked toward the man. “You knew what he was up to?”
Barry looked away from his work in confusion. “Sure. It wasn’t like he was subtle about it.”
“Why didn’t you tell me!” Jacob demanded.
Barry tilted his head slightly in confusion. “I assumed you knew and were allowing it to happen to catch him out and punish him. I couldn’t think of any other reason you would let him do everything he was doing. You saw how he was; you even locked him up because of it. Even I could see Franky was a childish, inconsiderate person, yet his entire personality shifted after he returned from his isolation. Someone like that doesn’t just change in just a few weeks. Maybe if you left him in that room for a few years, but even then, I doubt Franky would have changed or forgiven you for putting him there.”
Jacob stared at Barry in dumbfounded shock. The man stared back for a bit before their staring contest became awkward.
“You must have seen the same thing?” Barry asked uncomfortably.
“No,” Jacob replied quietly, “no, I did not.”
“Oh,” Barry replied slowly.
“This isn’t Barry’s fault,” Katherine said, cutting through the tension. “I warned you to keep an eye on him, Jacob. You’re the only one here who couldn’t see Franky for who he was. And before you snap at anyone, maybe try asking for our opinions instead of treating us like your underlings.”
Jacob’s mouth opened to respond, but he snapped it closed, the annoyed tirade he had been prepared to go on dying before it could even get started.
Katherine’s words stung, but when he looked back on their interactions, he realized she was right. For the most part. Other than asking them to weigh in on opening the station, he had essentially told them what they could do and controlled how they could do it. It wasn’t quite as bad as telling them what to do, but it wasn’t much better.
“You’re right,” he replied, earning a look of surprise from the woman. “I’ve been too caught up in trying to survive to realize that I’m not the only person in the same boat. I can’t guarantee that I will change overnight, but I will make a more concerted effort to include you two in the discussions.”
“That’s all I ask…Thank you,” Katherine replied awkwardly.
“That goes both ways, however,” Jacob continued. “If you have information, let me know.”
“We should tell Barry about the attack,” Katherine said.
“Attack?” Barry asked, giving his full attention to the discussion once again.
Right! Jacob forgot that Barry spent most of his time in the virtual space, and it wasn’t like the sirens or shaking would have transferred over from the real world.
“Yeah, someone attacked the representative and the station. Katherine and I—mostly Katherine, if I’m honest—were able to eliminate the threat. I’m still not sure why they attacked, but I believe it was because of someone the Astryx representative brought with them. The t’uk were after an eiraxin woman by the name of Xing’che.” As Jacob told them his theory, he pulled up a video of the attack and a picture of the woman.
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Barry only glanced at the photo before locking in on the video. Katherine, on the other hand, stared at the woman, a frown slowly appearing on her face.
“Is something wrong?” Jacob asked.
“No,” Katherine replied a bit too quickly, flushing slightly in embarrassment.
Jacob glanced between the adjunct’s image and Katherine when a lightbulb finally went off in his head. A chuckle escaped his lips before he could stop himself.
“What’s so funny?” Katherine asked defensively.
He tried to change the subject, but the woman refused to let it go. He would have just moved on, but since she was being so damn pushy about it, he told her. “You’re jealous.”
She crossed her arms and glared at him. “I’m not jealous…not exactly,” she admitted quietly.
Jacob waited for her to continue. Sharing was a two-way street after all.
Eventually, she huffed and gave in. “Fine. Do you know how long it takes for me to look this good each day? Even in this place?” she waved her arms around.
“Honestly? No,” Jacob admitted. “I haven’t really paid attention to how I or anyone looks.”
Going by the sour expression she quickly banished from her face, that probably wasn’t the right thing to say, but it was the truth. Jacob had more important things to worry about than women.
“I can tell. Well, it takes a lot of time, and this woman looks effortlessly gorgeous even after nearly dying. I can’t even tell if she’s wearing makeup or if she was just born that way. How is that fair?” she demanded.
“Um…she’s alien?” Jacob replied as if it was obvious.
Once she gained more control in the virtual space, she could just make herself look however she wanted instead of having to rely on digital makeup. He decided not to bring that up because she would probably be mad at him for how much time she had wasted. Better to let her discover that fact on her own.
Katherine fumed silently as Barry finished watching the playback of the fight.
“Hmm,” the man said. “It was a good idea to ram the vessel from the side. I assume that was your idea?”
The question was obviously directed toward Katherine, and her sulkiness immediately vanished at the praise. “It was, but Jacob was controlling them.”
Jacob was happy to be recognized for any contribution, but he felt dirty for receiving praise for killing people.
Barry nodded. “You should have used whatever you did to close on the ship much sooner. Then you might have been able to save one of the drones.”
“Look, we can discuss my lack of tactical acumen later. I brought you two here to discuss what’s coming. I haven’t been totally transparent with you. You know I’m stuck in the ship’s memory storage, and that I’m the captain. What I kept from you was the fact that I’m technically a fugitive based on the laws set down by the Alliance. That’s the group that took down the Concord Imperium nearly nine hundred years ago. I guess I should provide a bit of information about them as well. This is going to be a longer meeting than I planned.”
Jacob filled them in on the war, the dead zone, and Concord, what he knew about it anyway.
“Are you sure the ship was there to terraform Earth?” Barry asked. “It could have been there to terraform Mars or even another planet in the solar system, depending on how advanced their engineering is.”
“You’ve been studying their technology. Does it really seem much more advanced than humanity’s?”
“No,” Barry admitted. “I was quite surprised when I started studying the designs. You didn’t answer my other question, though. What makes you so sure they were going to terraform Earth?”
“I suppose they could have been targeting Mars, but I don’t believe so. I’m basing my belief on a hunch, but one backed up by a lot of circumstantial data. The dead zone for one, then the war, and other tidbits I’ve managed to put together since visiting the alien station to acquire parts. I can’t exactly believe everything I’ve read, but most of the data on Concord points to them being genocidal asshats who would rather slightly tweak a world to fit their ideal, rather than terraforming a world from scratch. I don’t know how much they would have had to terraform Earth, since the eiraxins, at least, seem to breathe a similar air mixture as humans do.”
“Maybe not at all,” Barry said thoughtfully. “The term planetary conditioning vessel doesn’t necessarily mean it was only designed to change a planet’s atmosphere. It could have been designed to remove local flora and fauna to allow for their own to take their place. To do that, and remove microbes, you would have to sterilize entire continents, probably with radiation. You wouldn’t get it all, but destroy enough to allow for the replacement organisms to move in, and the change would be irreversible.”
Jacob hadn’t considered that, but it made a horrible amount of sense with what he learned about the planetary conditioning vessel.
“And these Astryx people know you’re in control of such a vessel?” Katherine said in realization.
Jacob nodded.
“You have to get rid of the ship,” she added.
“I would if I could, but I’m literally a part of the vessel. I can’t move my consciousness to another medium, I’ve tried. I think it’s because I’m in the AI core, and the data storage is far different than that of your data storage. I’ve had time to ponder why the data mediums are different, and I believe it was a deliberate design choice to prevent an AI from being able to escape from its core. The only other core that’s available is the station AI, and I’m not going to risk disrupting that on a hunch. If I’m wrong and I damage the station accidentally, we’re all screwed.”
“Yeah, let’s not do that,” Katherine said. “Can’t you just leave?”
“No. The representative locked out the hangar access. Nobody goes in or out until the judicator arrives, and he claims he doesn’t have the authority to override that lockout. I haven’t been able to confirm that, but if I were them, I would have done something similar in case the representative was killed or coerced.”
“I guess it was nice to know you,” Katherine said, before pushing her chair back to stand.
“Hold up,” Jacob said. “I’m not dead yet. I might be able to figure a way out of my situation, but I need some assistance from you two if that doesn’t pan out. We also need to figure out where the hell Franky went.”
Katherine snorted at that. “That last question is easy. Franky went to Earth.”
“Did he tell you that himself?” Jacob asked doubtfully.
“No, but I don’t need him to tell me to know where he went. Franky is a self-centered asshole with delusions of self-importance. I think we can all agree on that?”
Jacob and Barry nodded.
“What happens when someone like that finds themselves in a position of power? They find someone they can lord that power over.”
Jacob groaned in understanding. “He’s going to go to Earth to try and set himself up as the ruler, isn’t he?”
“It does seem like something he would do, doesn’t it?” Katherine smirked.
That seemed like a monumentally stupid idea, but it fit what he knew of Franky’s original personality.
He really wished he had a ship to send after Franky. The longer that man was left to his own devices, the worse the problem would grow. Unfortunately, the only vessel Jacob had that was capable of FTL travel and not subject to the lockdown was the severely damaged science drone sitting in one of Melody’s hangars. Even if Jacob thought it was spaceworthy enough to make it to Earth, which he didn’t, it would run into the same issue he encountered when going to Vorlos Station. Earth was beyond comm range and would require a repeater, maybe even two, to be placed before he could attempt to send a drone.
He wasn’t even sure the science drones could operate autonomously outside of that connection; they were very limited in their programming. Without AI or biological oversight, they just didn’t have the capacity for abstract instructions such as ‘Find and capture or destroy Franky before he can cause a huge mess on Earth.’ At best, it might be able to locate the transport, destroy it, and Franky.
Jacob didn’t believe that was a likely outcome, however. If Franky was smart enough to steal a ship, Jacob had to assume he was smart enough to hide the vessel or at least move his consciousness off it after he landed.