Captured and Captivated

Chapter 9

SARHEN

I didn't bother separating cleanly from Elis Station.

So what if ripping my Sannis away from the umbilical tether accidentally depressurized the whole landing bay? Maybe, if I was very lucky, it just might send Delex hurtling into the warm embrace of open space? I could live with myself for that.

Delex was the First Officer of the Royal Guard of King Reyus of the Satu Empire. It was a very long title that basically translated as "he that handles Reyus's dirty work efficiently and quietly". He and I had... well lets just say that we'd met before. It had gone poorly. He was an outrageous prick. The kind that, if someone replaced half his brain with a computer, would anyone actually be able to tell the difference? There were worse things that I could imagine then seeing him spinning cartwheels through the deep black.

There would also be consequences. Whatever. Add them to the list.

One impending disaster at a time and I had more than enough on my hands as it was. My onboard was currently barely 14% operational and I was close to literally flying blind.

The human was strapped in tight to the seat next to me. She was technically in the navigator's chair, but that was just a technicality. The Sannis was a tiny ship- or lithe, as I preferred to think- and she could easily be piloted by a one-person crew. Augments were antisocial by necessity and my human was the second advanced sentient to ever be on my ship with me.

She was clearly nervous as she watched how I fumbled with the controls. My motions lacked their usual precision and probably looked downright alarming from her perspective.

I pinged my onboard. Reboot at 14.4%. It should have been at least 80 by now. Karking Delex. Gods he was a prick.

It would be a lot easier to put myself into sleep mode and simply let whatever was left of my computer handle all the details, but as soon as we hit hyperspace I would need to operate and remove that tracker or there wouldn't be any point in gating at all.

If I wasn't barely functioning, the thought of what Delex did to her would be absolutely infuriating. Someone else had put something inside my human. I must have been in worse shape than I'd thought because I couldn't even fully articulate a sex joke to torment my onboard with.

14.76%

The message scratched through my head. Oh. That was why. I would need to run a repair on my system whenever it was conv-

14.77%

Fine. As soon as possible. First things first though.

I let my hands chose the fastest course to the system's one and only gate. Any moment now the Krynn would figure out that their prized captive was gone and they'd start the shutdown. I roughly calculated that we had three minutes give or take before we were stranded here.

15.02%

Just enough for my onboard to make a jerky, angry mental hiss at me daring to guesstimate a time frame.

By the time we would hit the gate I should have just enough of myself together to navigate into hyperspace. And then- er, my human wouldn't like what had to happen next.

I looked over, struggling to say something reassuring. My human was watching me with white knuckled silence. Ah. My nose was bleeding again. That- that happened when I rebooted while conscious. How embarrassing. I'd have to explain it to her later.

For now though I tried to focus. Figure out what went so wrong so I could stop it from happening again.

Delex had ambushed me. The weapon he used had targeted only my onboard, but with focused precision. The intent had been to disable me, not kill me outright. It would had to have been specially calibrated to my exact electronic signature, to just a generic blanket stun designed to royally piss off any random Augment.

So someone had told them I was coming. Me, specifically. There was only one name in all the Behl that made sense. Only one other who knew exactly what I was doing.

Banedon.

Banedon... had betrayed me? Why?

And to the Satu? The thought would be utterly ridiculous if there were any other explanation that I could shakily compute. Banedon and I weren't enemies. We weren't friends, either, but something approaching it. Augments don't get the luxury of "friends". For that you need a soul and the Satu had seen fit to deprive us of that when they created us. Up until this moment I had thought Banedon and I had been firmly on the same page regarding sentiment to our makers.

But again, why? I had completed the job for him. He gained nothing by betraying me afterwards.

A warning chime broke me out of the thought. Two minutes and fifteen seconds exactly- thank you 15.7% status- and the Alconis had just separated from Elis and locked in on our course.

Won-karking-underful. Guess Delex had lived after all. How nice.

Evaluate the situation. Pros and cons, assets and advantages, liabilities and we're fuckeds. Advantage: we had a headstart. Space travel at relativistic speeds was a matter of seconds and nanoseconds. If their ship started to close the distance I had a few tricks up my sleeves that were getting better by the moment.

The fuckeds? My Sannis was good, but the Alconis was better. It was arguably the best ship in the Behl, much as I loathed to concede it. Put that together with my human having a tracker and no time for me to dig it out meant only one thing: the next one minute 17.628 standard seconds were about to be very, very interesting.