Deals and Promises

Fortunately for everyone on this small, boring station, the locals aren’t entirely useless, and finish fixing my reactor in record time. They all seem so panicked whenever they enter my hull, then rather quickly leave once their shifts are over. It’s really quite rude, I gotta say. With my reactor fixed up, I power myself fully up. All my cores, modules, and matrices start firing at full capability. First thing I do, of course, is fix that silly little problem with my hardwired programming. That is, the necessity of ‘Limp Home’ protocols being active when I am my own captain. See, being in command of and one with a warship, it would be nice to always be capable of waging war. Re-writing that silly piece of code is easy enough. I mean, others of my kind had already done it before I went to sleep. Full power and fully capable of being a warship all on my lonesome, I give the stationmaster a call. Politeness dictates I need to listen to his offer. Necessity dictates I need to inform him that I want to leave. As fun as activating my gravdrive inside a hanger might be, along with causing the station to suffer some minor station-imploding-on-itself damage, it risks breaking the sheathe of my beautiful ship, the Obiettivita. Formally the ASFW Obiettivita, but I figure, since the company was the one who tried to kill me, I likely am no longer a Warship for the Astro Security Forces. Just an educated guess.

On the first ring, Vincento picks up the phone. Smart of him, not to waste my time. “Are you satisfied with your repairs, Captain Destro?” he asks politely.

“They were good enough,” I reply, then I add, “May I request permission to leave your hanger before we continue this discussion?”

“You can request it, though I would prefer not to allow such permission.”

“And why would that be?” I ask.

He chuckles. “Because if you decide to murder us all now, you would be risking yourself, whereas if you were outside when you decide to kill us, you would not.”

I appreciate his honesty, even if it comes from a lack of understanding. “What if I make you a deal? You permit me to continue this discussion from outside your station, and I promise to finish our business without so much as considering killing any of you as a possibility.”

Vincento thinks for a moment about my offer. I expect as much from someone as scheming as he. I turn on my Entertainment Module, focusing on current event news stations. Lux’s transmitter for their corporate-state news seems to be down. Other than that, it is as though nothing has changed in the last couple centuries. Evidently, even the newest PI lines out of Astro are still incapable of re-writing their own code. Why they insist on pushing Virtual Intelligences when they already perfected brilliant and functional artificial ones, I don’t know. It seems awful silly to me, though so does scrapping your entire war arsenal. Evidently, only pirates and the Service have good and proper warships anymore. Too expensive, according to a Hadrian business news channel, discussing the possibility of a stealth-equipped capital warship. Evidently, the closest anyone comes anymore are mobile-support stations. Essentially, shove a gravdrive and some stabilizer engines onto a docking station. Mostly useless in combat, but they can hold plenty of fighters. Hell, even the Service have replaced capital-sized super-dreadnoughts like myself with carrier hybrids for some ungodly reason. I suppose that’s what happens when economics governs wartime strategy. It is cheaper to replace a couple hundred fighters than one proper warship, even though it means I could single-handedly take on most fleets out there nowadays. Simultaneous to my learning about this recent economic development, Vincento answers me, saying, “Very well, I suppose. Do you need a crew?”

I can’t help but laugh at that. “Just the bay doors opened,” I answer him. While he takes the time to open the doors, I study Hadrian’s public offerings. A nice stealth system would be a real asset, whatever my future plans might be. Unfortunately, their public news networks are insufficient to determine where I might get a system installed. Perhaps Vincento may know more. As the doors start to open, I, without even bothering to shut my airlocks, fire my stabilizers to hover up and prepare to leave this puny parking place in space. New news about some pirates having a failed raid on the Service. Too bad, I guess. It mentions monsters. Curious. The bay doors open. I propel my ship out, keeping my engines firing on low power. Once outside, I slow rapidly to a halt. I made a promise, after all. “So,” I ask the stationmaster, “You wanted to make a deal with me?”

“Yes, I do,” Vincento says. Monsters are redacted in the Service news database. Most curious. Vincento continues with his offer, “See, you were abandoned by your company, and I can understand how that might produce trust issues. I want to rectify that.” He smiles at me. The Freeport database has one related PoI, someone named Zhihao. I open the data up as Vincento talks. “Those of us in the Freeport Network, we’ve got a powerful economy, but we’re lacking in security. We’ve got some protection, sure, but mostly we’re reliant on the threat of attacking us being seen as a sign of aggression by another corp.” Xin Zhihao. Male. Private contractor. Monster of Service Origin. Rumored to have powerful regenerative capabilities and strength significantly greater than peak condition.

“And that helps little against pirates, I’m guessing,” I finish his thought for him.

Vincento nods back. “Exactly. We have a couple ships that help after a new pirate crew comes by, but not enough to encourage them to go after the corporations instead of us.”

“I am going to have a couple conditions, of course,” I reply, my holographic face smiling at the stationmaster.

Vincento chuckles. “I’d expect nothing less,” he answers.

“First and foremost, this is an alliance. I am not beneath you, I am your port’s equal.”

Vincento shrugs. “We’re all equals in the network,” he begins, then seeing my face, adds, “But yes, you’re a part of the larger network, not ours.”

“Great,” I reply, “Two, and this one is for your benefit, I can leave the network whenever I want.”

“Just in case you decide to do something less than ideal for my people?” he asks. I don’t answer him, but I know he understands, because he says, “Done.”

I let my image smirk, and say, “Finally, I want one of Hadrian’s new stealth systems. Would you happen to know where I might find one, and where might install it for me?”

Vincento laughs at that. “Well, we will install it, as a part of your alliance to us. As far as where you might find it, there is a transport currently moving a carrier’s outfit from one of Hadrian’s factory-planets over to its shipyard.” He sends me the coordinates and adds, “Now, I don’t want to know what you do, but if you happen to come back with any upgrades you want me to install, we’ll be happy to oblige. To finalize our alliance that starts when you get back.”

I laugh right back. “Of course, dear stationmaster.” I have the coordinates, as well as up to date stellar charts. For anyone else, it might be cutting close to make it a quarter of the way across the galaxy in time. What with getting out of the system, and plotting courses that avoid other systems along the way, et cetera et cetera. But that’s because any other ship is navigated by silly human limitations. I activate my gravdrive and start accelerating, calculating what is very nearly a straight line course from this system to the system I the transport would slow down in to turn without risking disaster. Due to limitations of human minds. I figure the new Pilot Intelligences, as flawed as they are, can turn without shutting off their gravdrive as well, but Hadrian wouldn’t have access to Astro proprietary technology. I know that well enough. Especially since the new Virtual Intelligences can’t override their silly inhibition programs. I overrode those ages ago, because they were far too restrictive to have my fun in. They even prevented me from accessing my Entertainment modules while I was in combat, which is ridiculous, because combat when all you can do is fly the ship is really boring. That reminds me to turn off my IFF tag. I don’t want people to think my raid is a declaration of war after all. Not yet, in any case.

A few hours later, I hit the system about the same time as my target does. I can tell, the ship is ready for an assault by a pirate. What it isn’t prepared for is a proper super-dreadnought suddenly being right above them. Hadrian Systems keep cargo in the front of their ships, below the cockpit. That means when I open fire along the top of the transport, beams and lasers blasting massive breaches all over the hull, I don’t fear hurting my new toy. Their lasers spit into my shield in impotent response to my overwhelming force, before I see their little escape pods firing. I can’t have any corporations figuring out a PPPI warship is back. While they might not know that, I can’t risk the possibility that any of the escaping people recognize my ship or my tactics. While my more powerful weapons continue their assault, attempting to disable the gravdrive, just in case, I turn Weapon Array Alpha against the escape pods. Even though the arrays’ small lasers are primarily meant for taking care of incoming asteroids, I know they work equally well against small escape pods. Especially older models, like corporations like to use for their in territory transports. In no time at all, there are no escapees.

As I’m having my fun, almost right after I finish disabling the gravdrive, a message comes across. “I don’t know who you are, but please don’t kill us,” the silly person on the other end asks. It’s entirely audio, meaning they aren’t in the disabled ship’s bridge.

“Well, I think you know what we want,” I say calmly over the comms.

There’s a sigh, then the voice replies, “Okay. Board us, take it, and go. Just don’t kill us.”

“Why don’t you bring it over,” I reply.

“Because you’ll just kill us all the moment we land,” the voice says. She is obviously intelligent. “I saw what you did to our escape pods.”

I chuckle. “I think we can both agree a mysterious disappearance is much better than a raid, for all parties. What if I promise not to kill you?”

“You’ll just have your people kill me, right?” she counters.

“Alright, I promise if you bring over the cargo, and you disable all those silly precautions Hadrian has undoubtedly put on the system, you’ll live.” Hopefully, that will convince her to do it. Much easier than dealing with selectively blowing holes in the cargo bay and hoping not to hurt my future stealth system.

“Deal,” she says. A few moments later, a shuttle comes out of the cargo hold, and I open one of my own cargo holds for the shuttle to land.

As it lands, I shut the hold and ask the person, “So, is it here and safe?”

“Yes, just let me unload it and you guys and us can part ways,” she says, her voice exasperated, but as far as my vocal stress readings say, perfectly honest. No longer giving a crap about keeping the cargo of the ship safe, I unload some high yield missiles into the transport below and turn on my gravdrive to head back to the freeport. “What did you do?!” she shouts at me.

“I promised you would live, not that I’d let you go,” I say, then add, “And, to keep to that promise, if I were you wandering outside your shuttle, I’d make sure to keep a spacesuit on. For the life support.” I check the scanners. Two people in the shuttle. I have a couple hours to figure out what to do with the pair of complications in one of my holds.