USF Progenitor & Crew: Adventures in Cosmos 01

[ZC#22] Read-Only

Ryoma complained, "Oh my God, nobody is picking uuup, brah. Kaishu... how did you hack into that ship that one time? When you raised their alarm?"
"Ryoma, no, I did that to save them," Kaishu replied.
Ryoma insisted, "Yes, Kaishu, this is important. We need to know what happened. We need to save them from themselves!"
"No, Ryoma. Call the captain and he'll help you," Kaishu argued.
Ryoma fought on, pretending to be very serious, "Kaishu! This isn't a debate! I want to deliver this message to them personally! We don't have time to just... sit around, Kaishu! I have things to do! Important... things! I can't count on both hands!" Kaishu burst out laughing, but Ryoma resumed, "Kaishu! Shut it! I have business meetings to get to! Business to discuss—wait, I don't say things like that!"
"Ryoma, you don't have any business to discuss," Kaishu argued, laughing.
"You don't know that! You don't know! Get a clue! Kaishu! You have no idea the sacrifices I made for us. You don't know anything about business, Kaishu!" Ryoma relentlessly berated, though playfully. "You listen to me, and you listen good, buddy boy." Ryoma broke character and laughed, then persisted, "You're going to haaaaack into their ship, and theeeeen." He was speaking with some level of authority, and strangely as though he were testing Kaishu.
Kaishu shook his head and deflected, "No. I'm not doing it, Ryoma. The USF is going to disown us and the ship when they find out, and then what are you going to do?"
"Kaishu, Kaishu, Kaishu. My, how you've groooown, to become a pain in my aaaaa$$, Kaishu," Ryoma dramatized, making them both laugh. "That was a good one, yeah? Anyways. Here's the plan, then. We're going to waaaait for them. No... here's the plan! Here's the plan, Kaishu. You're going to... haaaaack in—."
"Ryomaaa! Seriously, I'm not doing it. They're going to f$ck our a$$es wide open! We would get in serious trouble!" Kaishu cried out.
"Oh, seriously serious, serious, yeah? Serious? Are you serious, Kaishu?! All you're worried about is your a$$?! What about my assets?!?" Ryoma trolled, pushing Kaishu to possibly crack and do his bidding.
Kaishu sighed, looking at Ryoma with some distance. He really didn't want to disobey the USF, but he knew that Ryoma had plans in place that were tough to compare with their very "straight edge" government. Everyone on the ship might get grounded if we do that, he thought to himself.
"Kaishu, you're such a wuss," Ryoma taunted.
"No I'm not, Ryoma." He was considering an alternative, but hacking directly into a USF-governed space vessel would signal a red flag in the system, and they would be placed under arrest then tried in a USF Federal court of law if they were to get caught. Kaishu knew the risk of getting caught, as well as how quickly the USF could trace back to them on the changelogs. There were some backdoor procedures he knew he could run, but he didn't like the risk being so apparent. Doing a stealthy hijack was like trying to remove bullets from gunshot wounds using a broadsword. The consequences would be harsh at discovery without a valid reason and report. Hacking into a USF space vessel like before we only acceptable in a prior engagement for the reason that it was a derelict craft that was about to float into the gravity well of a supergiant-class star, meaning a fatal trip into unimaginable temperatures and imminent death for anyone who was onboard.
Ryoma stopped badgering Kaishu for a moment, going back to comms to spam the Progenitor's voice mail and emails en masse. He enthusiastically spoke for another voice mail, "Hi, yes, this is Captain Ryoma Lubak of the USF speaking." He coughed. "Who—is—the officer aboard the ship responsible—for running away from the MacKalla asteroid? Was that you running away? You ran away? Call me, any time! Captain Ryoma. Yup." Ryoma hit the send button on the touch screen really hard, pushing his weight on it excessively. He then asked Kaishu, "How do we find out who is onboard that ship? I want to know the personnel on the Progenitor, and I want to spam the sh$t out of their personal email inboxes. Then, they'll have to see it. Right? They're probably like us, Kaishu... dodging all the bullsh$t emails Command sends us." He laughed and hid his head into his arms, bouncing both knees. He got up then jammed his fingers into his keyboard multiple times, recklessly creating an email of random strings made of both text and numbers.
"Ryoma, what are you doing?" Kaishu asked, smiling at Ryoma's abandonment of chill. "Why are you going crazy?"
Ryoma said, "None of your business, Kaishu. Relaaaaax, bah, I got this. You've got nothing to worry about, nothing to do. Go and study a research paper on boogers and why you eat them." He took a hit from his joint then began typing randomly again, furiously spamming more characters and symbols into the email documents, moving his body around like he was playing an intense, classical piece on a piano. "You didn't—pick up—the phoooone! You didn't—pick up—."
"Ryoma!" Kaishu called out, grinning. "You're going to break the computer if you don't stop doing that! Stop doing that!"
"Yeah, I know!" Ryoma said, walking away from the computer then going back and sitting down again. "I need a new computer. Kaishu? Get me a new computer. I need a new computer, because this one is way too slow for what I'm trying to process here." Ryoma joked, mashing the keyboard harder and very dramatically bobbing and weaving in his seat. He took another hit from his joint, looked at it, then went right back to making a mess of nonexistent words, the joint dropping onto the floor.
"Ryoma, are you done?" Kaishu asked.
Ryoma said, "Wait! I have to prove that I'm a genius! I know I am!" Then he typed a few more lines of nonsense. "Okay! Then, my name and signature at the bottom!"
Kaishu tried not to laugh.
Ryoma sent the email to the Progenitor's master email account for everyone in the Progenitor's crew to read. Ryoma tagged his ship, The Zeddnought Cruiser, in the subject line using a hashtag.
"Kaishu, I just sent... out... five hundred of the same email to their master account. Do you think they'll get it?" Ryoma checked with Kaishu, sarcastically. "Kaishu, that's big numbers!"
Kaishu replied, "Ummm, yeah?"
"I'm not sure they'll get it. I need to send... aaaahh, five hundred mooore emails!" Ryoma endured, smiling at his hands as they typed away.
Kaishu shook his head, smiling tiredly, then went back to his studies. He was reading about skin conditions varying between star systems, that each star created their own results, sometimes changing the pigments of the epidermis into exotic colors like blue or a light purpleish-magenta. He found that as interesting as what was on his other tab he had open.
On the other tab, Kaishu was reviewing a small battle between the JSF and the CSF over satellites, where the Japanese and the Chinese contested each other in space dominance, sending vessel after vessel to line up at their respective region borders. The star system in a cold war was the Han-Zhu Xo-Ming-Ma Foxtrot Star System, adjacent to Kaishu's favorite star system, the Dong-Mao Zhueng Ong-Na Echo Star System. It was there that the Chinese and the Japanese were able to get along better, focused on themselves and self-improvement of their space stations, satellite missions, and the development of their honor code in the Space Force military. Every star system, Kaishu learned, handled their interstellar relationships differently, depending on the ruling class decisions.
Oftentimes, it felt to Kaishu as though the Earth's dramatic expansion into space was underwhelmingly similar to the expansion of a kingdom or nation. From his studies, he found what Ryoma and Ka'eo coined, in one of their more normal conversations, the 'fibonacci expanse'—a constant propelling of what already has been, spiraling outward from an ultimate source, the one prime example being Earth.
Ryoma hated Earth and thinking about the Earth, frustrated with the stupidity of human life, especially after he left. In concept, the Earth was his beautiful home, but he didn't feel like he belonged there after so many Earth years. He wouldn't hesitate to blow it up if he were in the mood to lash out against it for his past. Ryoma was keen on making the Earth a better place when he was there, partly thanks to Ka'eo befriending him, and their mutual teachers back in high school. Ever since Ryoma left and had been allowed to taste some of the 'immortality pie,' he felt happier in space with his brother, Kaishu, and his crew who he coined 'sick, geeky f$cks.'
"Ryoma," Kaishu called. "Ryoma, you should see what they're doing."
"No, Kaishu, I'm busy," Ryoma said. He wanted to quote his own masterpiece of a line, something from back in high school, saying, can't you see I'm working here? You dumb—kids! He rejected saying it aloud, knowing it would spawn more memories, and possibly more self-inflicted violence. He quickly looked behind him to see if someone from his past was there. Nobody was there.
"I'm getting tired," Kaishu said, reading his screen blankly. He got up and walked over to Ryoma's screen, read the first line, 'xxfg f gupfoufugguggcfh guovuj,' and gave up on telling Ryoma what to do. He walked back to his chair and sat in it, defeated, exhaling a long sigh. He went back to his own screen and wondered.
Ryoma responded, "Well, go to sleep, Kaishu. You have a bed. Go back to your home, then." Ryoma appeared to have flipped his mood around, trying to figure out how to get in contact with the crew of the Progenitor without having to fly to their location and touch down off course. He contemplated making a request to a USF CO (commanding officer) but didn't want to rock the boat.
As Ryoma sat in his seat, smoking his joint, he felt a moment of serenity refill him. He was able to tap into his intuition and inner world, just for a time, reminding him that space time was extremely slow in comparison to the time on planets and big asteroids, and yet, the illusion was that everything was getting accomplished in space at a similar rate. He didn't know what this meant, but it provoked him to call on Cpt. Borges.
"Kaishu," Ryoma prodded, "Get Captain Borges on. I need to know what's happening. The Progenitor's crew isn't answering. He said... he doesn't want us to approach the asteroid, but to extract the data. What f$cking data? Extraction point for what?! Why was there another ship there if not to do the same thing? Or, what were they doing there in the first place?"
"Yeah. Okay, I'll get Captain Borges on. Standby, Ryoma," Kaishu acknowledged, navigating to the list of command ship comms and selecting Captain Borges.