Luciana walked around her cage like a wild animal. The huge area dedicated to prison told her that this ship was used to seeing slave labor aboard it.

The cell was a cage, surrounded with iron bars that shot out an electrical discharge if a prisoner tried to bang on the bars. Luciana tested it out herself once already. An electric discharge shot out, her body convulsed, and she’d dropped to the floor. It was an experience not worth repeating. All of the prisoners were in the same bay area, each separated by their own small, electric discharge cages. There were only two prison guards, but Luciana imagined more showed up whenever they needed to move them out.

Her mind grappled with the scene she had seen a few hours prior. She’d watched Mark face down dozens of armed assailants with no problem, but the man he’d fought in the bay area had taken him down without moving an inch. Mark’s super human attacks didn’t land, and he’d chunked Mark around like a rag doll.

It bothered her that the overwhelming show of force had its desired effect, the faith of the crew in their captain had been rattled. That was clearly the goal. If the crew had faith in their captain, they might hold fast against whatever torture or interrogation methods they were about to be subjected to. With their confidence rattled though, they may be tempted to jump ship far faster.

She was also reeling from seeing Mark’s dad in person. The man was a military legend. Him also being a traitor was unthinkable. But she knew it had to be true.

If he’d turned other generals to his way of thinking, the reason why the pirates were one-upping the Alliance was not hard to figure out. An even more horrifying thought was that John Thomas wasn’t the person highest up on the food chain. What if it included Council members?

There’s no telling how far up the food chain the problem could be. The Alliance would rip itself in half trying to ferret out everyone who could possibly be a turncoat or at least a sympathizer.

One of the monitors that she could see kept making odd blinking that attracted her eyes to it. She ignored it at first, too deep in thought, but after seeing the pattern, she started paying attention to it. Was it… morse code?

“This is EVE. You need to get out of there. When you get one of their comm sets, I’ll guide you out. Get the guard to come near the bars.”

“Guard, come over here. I want to talk,” she said loudly at one of the guard’s. The man looked at the other guard, who nodded his assent to the request, and he walked over. He took a few steps towards her, but didn’t go all the way to the bars.

“Get him closer,” EVE spelled out.

“I’m Captain Luciana Smith,” she begin. This was entirely unnecessary, as her rank and name were both visible in her military uniform, but she didn’t know if the guard had any military experience and could understand rank. “I’m the second in command. I can negotiate the release of the crew and give Admiral Thomas whatever he wants to know.”

The crew members looked at each other. Luciana studied them. The first was a young man, maybe in his early 20s, the second his late 30s. The younger looked to the older one for approval. The young guard walked towards her.

“Put your hands behind your back and walk backwards towards the bars,” he ordered. Before she complied, she saw the display blink “Prepare to move.”

As soon as the guard put his hands through the bars to cuff her, an electric arc hit him. The electrical defense systems were wired to prevent guards from getting zapped. Even more important, they were supposed to keep the voltage to incapacitating levels, never lethal. Both of those safeties were off.

The voltage that shot through the guard was lethal. He slumped forward, body getting caught underneath his armpits as his body slumped forward . She pulled out his pistol, an unfortunately difficult task with the holster facing the wrong way. The other guard was initially shocked and immobile, but as soon as he saw her going for the gun, he went for his as well. The lights went off as soon as he drew.

Fumbling in the dark, she managed to get the downed guards firearm out. She crouched to make herself less of a target and hid behind the downed guards body, using him as an impromptu shield. The lights flashed back on. Both fired at each other as soon as the lights flipped.

She didn’t need the cover. The young guard’s aim was the jerky, scared motions of someone going through their first adrenaline dump. Hers was the smooth, steady aim of a professional. Despite what old time movies and video games would have you believe, a pistol is an incredibly inaccurate firearm. The slightest tremor or pull could throw the projectile off.

Her shot was a center mass shot that burned through the guard. He was dead. She quickly went to work frisking the dead guard nearest her. “They don’t use keys, it’s biometric. You need to put his hand on the plate outside the cell door.”

Thus began an awkward shuffle where she moved the body, put her hand through the bar, grabbed his collar, and pushed him forward with her other hand. She was in a definite hurry though as she couldn’t be sure someone else would come in and find them in a compromised position.

After what felt like minutes, but probably wasn’t even a single minute, she had the body in position to escape. She put his hand on the plate and the door opened. She walked out and grabbed the dead guard, dragging him to 1SG Vidal’s cell. She put the guards hand on his cell and opened it up.

“Help everyone else out of their cells,” she told the big man. Whereas she had been dragging the body around, Vidal simply slung the dead man over his shoulder and went from cell to cell, unlocking the crew.

When he was done releasing the crew, he unceremoniously dumped the body at the body at the last cell. “What’s our plan now?”

“How’d you do it?” Mark asked the man. He was a beat cop again. He’d been working a case where a street performer robbed people, and only viewing the footage in slow-motion were the slights of hand able to be detected.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

The performer sat in the interrogation booth. He was in his forties, brown hair that just started getting streaks of grey through it. He looked like a short version of the actor Gene Wilder, maybe five four or so. He had a lawyer with him and he was going through the plea bargain agreement, agreeing to confess and plead guilty in exchange for a more lenient sentence.

“It’s easy,” the performer told him. “When you know how. See, people think of the brain as this grand organ. But that’s the wrong image. The brain is like a watchman looking over a thousand monitors. And that watchman has poor eyesight. So he can only focus on one thing at a time.

I got the idea when I was in college. Took an introductory psychology class. They showed us a video where two teams are dribbling balls and the instructions tell you to count how many times the balls bounce. Somewhere in the middle of it, a man in a gorilla suit comes out and walks around, then goes back into the crowd. When the students were asked, none of them saw the man in the gorilla suit. Mind concentrates on one thing, and it ignores everything else going on.

So if you want to rob someone, all you do is give them something else to think about. While they were focusing on the magic trick, I was robbing them blind.”

With that, Mark woke up from his dream. Getting beat unconscious wasn’t like in movies where you could just shrug it off. It left you feeling weak, sick to your stomach, like being hungover while beaten by a motorcycle gang with baseball bats.

Fortunately, Mark had merely been choked out as opposed to beat unconscious. Getting thrown and kicked around by invisible force had left him bloody and bruised, but he could still move around without feeling queasy.

He checked his surroundings. He was in what looked like an officer’s cabin on any other ship. A single desk in the corner for work, a bed, closet, foot locker, a door leading out with a comm display, and a tiny bathroom. He guessed that this dear old dad thought he’d be joining the dark side pretty soon and wanted to butter him up. Fat chance.

The comm display was beeping. Comm displays were used so officers could see who was outside their door. In the olden days, assassins used to knock on doors and wait until the peephole was being looked through, then fire a bullet into the unlucky soul. Such problems didn’t exist in the future.

“Welcome back,” EVE said in his head. “I’m in the process of freeing your crew, and I have your video feed on a loop so it still looks like you’re passed out. Get out of here and make your way to the hanger. I’ll guide you to the hanger.”

Mark got up, groaning as his bruised ribs protested, and made his way to the door. He looked at the comm display. It was all quiet outside the door. He walked outside. Straight into a waiting squad of armed men with plasma rifles pointed at him.

Mark found himself on the bridge. Unlike the tiny one his current ship had, this one could easily fit hundreds of people in it. It bore more resemblance to an auditorium than a typical bridge.

Mark looked and saw that his crew was back out. His Dad strolled out from between his men, his slow, deliberate steps creating an echo throughout the bridge. Mark expected him to be crooning over catching him, but he remained as stoic as ever.

“We got some good data from your little break out attempt. The intrusion method your little AI used was subtle, beautifully executed. But I’ve got literally hundreds of computer engineers on board this ship, it didn’t take them and our own AI long to spot the anomaly and redirect it. Honestly, how did you think you were going to escape?”

It was a good question. In movies, the escape requires that the bad guys can’t aim worth a damn, so their numbers are useless. Then the good guys would escape through some forgotten part of the ship that no one else used or thought about, which would also be close to where their escape vessels were. In reality, the quickest route out of the “death star” was at least 20 minutes away from where Mark left. 20 minutes evading a station that had thousands of people on it was a nightmare.

“So everything is about getting good data? How about we have a wager over that data?” A small quirk of the eyebrow was all Mark got in confirmation to his question. “Same bet we had before. Except this time, if you win, I’ll join you and so will all my team.”

He glanced over to Luciana, whose eyes went wide with the shock of his words. He gave her a small nod to say, “Trust me”. He hope she received the message.

“Very well,” his Dad said. The same man he’d taken a beating from before came out of the crowd. Mark held up a finger. He bent over and undid his shoes. “Hold on a sec,” he said, taking them off. The man looked at him quizzically, but didn’t make a move to stop him.

Mark picked up his shoes in each hand. “Okay, let’s begin,” Mark said. He activated his enhanced reflexes and threw his shoe at the man’s head. At the same moment, he ran towards him as fast as he could. The man was maybe 15 meters away, and running in his socks wasn’t ideal, but he figured he could make it.

The man stopped the shoe before it could strike him, but Mark was right behind. He baseball slid and planted an up kick directly into the man’s groin. The bulging eyes told him he landed his kick right where he wanted. It was a cheap shot, but fair fights are for rings, not the real World. He used his momentum to spin sweep the man off his feet. His opponent offered no resistance as Mark climbed his way up the downed opponent, attempting to secure a mount position, putting his weight on the man’s chest to keep him from being able to effectively use his hips to buck Mark off.

Mark didn’t need to worry. His opponent engaged in the “wail and flail” pattern most often associated with novice grapplers. Mark drove his elbow into the man’s body as he worked his way up. He figured that as long as the man was in pain, he’d have a hard time concentrating, and his power seemed to depend on him being able to concentrate. When Mark secured the mount, he pushed the man’s face to the side, leaning all his weight down. Then he drove his right elbow into the man’s exposed temple.

He gave two more strikes, out of spite and to make sure the man would stay down. Mark got up and walked over to retrieve his shoes.

“There’s some good data for you,” Mark said, putting on his left shoe. “Teach your men how to fight. Tricks might work once, but not infinitely.”

Mark looked up at his Dad. Was he… proud? That seemed to be the expression on his face.

“Well done,” John told him, approval in his voice. “Make sure you give a full report on what happened here. The council needs to know. War is coming. Whether it’s with me or the aliens, there will be war. Tell them what they’re up against,” he gestured to the “death star”.

“What do you call this thing?” Mark asked, dusting himself off from his brief scuffle on the floor.

“An EXTreme Robotic Mobile-planet , or an ‘EXTRM’ for short,” he spelled out the letters of the acronym for Mark’s benefit. “Seems… contrived,” was all Mark had to say on that.

“We have one other thing to discuss. I want to buy the original miners from you. Not their cloned versions, but the originals. One million credits per person,” Mark told his father.

“That’ll be five million,” John said, another of his small smiles gracing his face. “Replicants are expensive, as you know, even though we’ve found ways to cut down the costs.” Mark groaned inwardly, but he was authorized to make exactly these kinds of deals. The morality of leaving the replicants to a never ending cycle of mining and death didn’t appeal to him, but Mark knew that if he at least got the originals back, he could free them from their rigs and get them to safety.

That business concluded, John told one of his captains, “Escort my son and his people to his ship, they have a long flight ahead of them with what I’m sure will be a lot of explanations. Get the transfer before he goes.”

John walked off, an entourage in tow. He never gave a backwards glance. This would be one hell of a debriefing, Mark realized.