pointed it at him.
She flipped the safety off and fired several times. Every round struck its target, burning holes straight through Beaudric’s chest. He collapsed, clutching the air for something beyond understanding and died right before her eyes.
Gloria walked to his side and bent down low, watching as the framework system repaired the damage by materializing fresh flesh. When his body was mended, Beaudric gasped back to life. Gloria sneered at the hurt, confused expression on his face. “Every immortal on this ship is the Child Prophet’s victim. I bear the guilt, but he ordered it. If you want revenge, go and take it.” She told him as she dropped the weapon on his chest.
“How do I-“
“Find him? Get past security? You already know, just think for a change. Try and remember.”
He stood slowly, and regarded Gloria with mild astonishment. “I know. I can even remember him celebrating my birth, how?”
“I gave that memory to you as well. Now go do this for me, and I promise you’ll be free afterwards. I’m giving you control of thirty frameworks. Do whatever you like with them, you can even set them free, though they wouldn’t know what to do with themselves.” Gloria said as she started for the exit. “Or don’t, and return to your room. Knowingly serve a man child who will do what’s been done to you over and over again.”
The rest of Gloria’s evening was uninformative, she simply returned to quarters and laid down. Three minutes later to the millisecond she woke up as Eve again. She searched the surveillance feeds for any sign of Beaudric after he left the genesis chamber, but there were huge blind spots. Eve also couldn’t understand why she had to watch all the footage in sequence. It was as if it couldn’t be read any other way, by anything. The blocks in the system were the same, there as though forced into place by another active mind.
She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and kicked her heels off. “Security, find Beaudric and bring him to me! Increase security for Lister Hampon, the Child Prophet immediately,” she ordered. The system didn’t respond.
Eve tried to send the commands using her link, but again, there was no acknowledgement. She tried reaching past the ship, and discovered a great void, space with no data. An attempt to leave her quarters failed as she almost walked into a door that didn’t open as it should. It was then that she realized, she was never addressing the system at all. All the surveillance footage had been copied to her backup memory, and someone had used her own framework components to disable her wireless input output systems. She was alone. There was no connection, no freedom, and Gloria was somehow responsible. Eve began to shake, a tear rolled down her cheek as she began to feel helpless, furious, and she pounded on the door until her fists bruised.
The framework components grafted into her bones repaired the damage, and she screamed, shocking herself as her frantic voice filled her ears. Quivering with rage, she turned her back to the door and began to ponder. How had Gloria managed it? How had she taken control of her, directly manipulated the framework body she once inhabited and then taken control of enough of the ship to completely isolate her? Eve’s thoughts rarely turned towards what could be happening beyond her door, none of that mattered as much as regaining her digital sight and control.
Despite her haze of emotion, she turned her mind’s eye inward, and began to try and restore her input output systems.
Chapter 34
The Captain's quarters on the Clever Dream were made for comfort. The central seat; a flat, round furnishing in the middle of the cabin, adjusted to Ayan's shape as soon as she sat down, and shifted with her. She settled in and ended up cross legged, and, though she'd seen it twice already, she started reviewing the most recent scan data of the Triton. The ship had taken a beating, that was for sure, but Oz commanded her crew expertly. The calculations Laura had included, detailing how the enemy was able to disrupt their wormhole by tracking the energy wake proved that, without a doubt, that's exactly what had happened.
Thoughts of all the people they left behind; Jason, Oz, and so many others who she'd just met threatened to add weight to her concern, to become to debilitating worry. She'd never been more worried in all her life, and to make things worse, she suspected that most of the experienced spacers, the ones who lived most of their lives on the fringe, didn't think she did a good job negotiating with the Carthan government or Patrizia Salustri. Stephanie definitely didn't approve of the deal that had been struck, but Ayan had thought how that played out through several times since, and, given their situation, she couldn't think of any other way it could have gone. She knew things were dire at their initial landing site, that they needed more solid footing both figuratively and literally, and that she didn't have time for more elegant solutions.
The Carthan Government wasn't about to change it's policies, and given time she might find a way to get a better deal, but for the time being she had a real permit that enabled them to start hunting. A connection to the community, though very new, had been made as well, and they had supplies for the short term. What would Stephanie have done that would have been faster, or better in the long run?
That's what frustrated Ayan the most about the whole situation. The more she let herself think about it, the less she regretted her confrontation with the Security Chief. She only hoped it wouldn’t drive her off the crew, she was good at her job, after all.
She brought up a replay of their fly over of the shanty port to take her mind off the whole thing, and instead of finding something familiar there, something she could compare to her past experiences, her heart just kept sinking. It was a sight unlike anything she'd imagined and she couldn't help but think that Stephanie, who had probably seen similar conditions elsewhere, would have done better.
With a sigh, she looked at the holographic image above her comm unit. Air and ground traffic flowed like rivers between the endless sea of ships and battered buildings. The variations in the designs were endless, and with a little searching she managed to find the block of empty slips they landed on. “Lewis, can you copy this recording to your holoprojector please?” she asked.
“Here you go,” he replied. The shanty port filled the room then, and she was sitting right in the middle. “I'll set the control profile to match your command unit. Look ma, no learning curve!” he exclaimed in an exaggerated comical tone.
Randolph Lalonde
Spinward Fringe Broadcast 6: Fragments
“Thank you Lewis. You're too good to us.”
“Don't I know it, but don't worry; I'm keeping track of billable hours. Someday, someone's going to get an invoice.”
Ayan laughed as she turned the holographic image so she could get a closer look at the ships who once occupied the spaces nearest to their landing site. “I'd love to be there when it happens.”
“I'll make sure you're in visual range. Just tell me if you need anything else.”
“All right, thanks again.” The angles the recording was taken from weren't perfect. She couldn't get a pedestrian's view, which would have been helpful, but she was able to find the name of one of the vessels. “ The Derringer ” she said to herself. It had six pivoting main thrusters, was a little over a hundred meters long and sported eight turreted cannons. The extra armour plating gave the vessel a utilitarian look, but she could tell it was probably once a lesser armed transport that had been heavily modified.
The door opened to admit Jake, who looked up to the ceiling with slight irritation. “Next time, let me knock, all right Lewis?” He muttered.
“Doors chime these days, Captain. Have you been watching too many period movies?”
“I'm just saying, it’s close quarters. If we don't take privacy where we can, we'll be at each other's throats that much sooner,” Captain Valance said as he looked to Ayan.
She flashed him a smile and nodded an invitation.
“That actually makes a great deal of sense, Captain.”
Jake shook his head and crossed the room to the centre seat, where he knelt behind Ayan.
