„Interesting“, one of the guards said. What was left of them, with three dead and another three wounded, had met Nico in the briefing room. He had just shared with them his encounter with the Qyrl prisoner.
„That message“, another one said, „from the Elias guy that we received. We already know more than the Qyrl has admitted.“
Nico nodded: „True. But no point in letting him know what we know. If we can find a working translator somewhere, I will go back and talk some more. He might be one of the aliens who were already on Bloom before the fight, or he might be from the boarding team that emptied the warehouse.“
He stopped for a second. Yezz had been a friend, and the aliens had not just stolen most of her goods, but also murdered her. If he found out that it was one of the prisoners, he would personally space the creature.
The third, and final, guard spoke up: „Coming back to the message from Elias. He admitted in it that he was an agent working for one of the governments on the planets, even if he didn’t say which. He’s got a transmitter somewhere that apparently survived the EMP. Maybe there’s a translator as well, maybe built-in?“
Nico sat up straight. „That’s an excellent idea. Go to his quarters and search them. If you find some… oh right, no intercom. I’ll come with you. The evacuation is underway and we need to figure out this Qyrl thing in case they come back.“
He sent the other guards back to roam the station. With the evacuation and the chaos, it was certain that they would be needed. Then he and the third guard, Roger, went to find Elias’ quarters. Nico quickly looked it up on the main administration server, which had survived the EMP even if the terminals in the office had not. Then they grabbed a toolbox and went over there. The place was not far from the market, so it was a short walk, ten minutes all in all.
The door did not respond to Nico’s override key. He was only mildly surprised at that, given what he had recently learnt about Elias. He came prepared and pulled out a laser cutter from the toolbox. The door had also been reinforced with meta-material against this kind of break-in. Nico had not expected that. It made a ten seconds job into a two minute job, but eventually he got the door open.
He stepped into the apartment of the dead spy and took in what he saw. A perfectly ordinary place, a bit messy from the gravity field failing, but nothing that would even hint towards Elias being more than a merchant and tinkerer.
„Alright“, he said to Roger, „let’s see what we can find. Secret compartments, inside furniture, floor, ceiling, could be anywhere.“
They searched the apartment, methodically, starting at the door and working their way inwards, checking every item and piece of furniture they encountered, knocking on the walls, the floor, the ceiling, occasionally using some of the scanning equipment in the toolbox. It was meant for craftsmen, but there were detectors for cables and hollow regions.
They did not speak much during the next hour, as they were both focussed on searching and worried that they might miss a vital clue. From the way the door was protected they understood that Elias was no amateur. They did not expect to find whatever he was hiding easily.
About half an hour in, Roger found a smartstick pushed to the back of a drawer by a book in a way that was both hiding it and at the same time offering plausible deniability of the „ah there it is!“ kind. Instead of telling Nico about it, Roger pocketed the stick. It was probably locked and useless, but he had his own reasons for being here.
After just over an hour of searching, Nico stumbled upon the hidden compartment. Once found it was not difficult to open it. There was an empty space next to what was clearly a hyperspace comm unit. The empty space had the shape and size of the plasma rifle that Elias had with him when they found his body. It was this hollow space that had given the compartment away.
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Nico whistled. This was the smallest hyperspace transmitter he had ever seen. A remarkable piece of human engineering. Definitely not off-the-shelf. It seemed custom-built for its hiding place, or the other way around, because it fit perfectly.
The unit switched on immediately as Nico pressed the power button. The „job complete“ message from an automated data wipe was on the screen. Probably something Elias had programmed to run after the open transmission to the station. He did not care, he was not here to browse the message log, so its loss meant nothing to him right now.
Working his way through the menu, he finally found the translation feature. „Yes!“, he said out loud. He checked the device and found two handles. „Yes!“, he said again, then „Roger, come over and help me here.“
A few minutes later, they had pried the comm unit from its place in the wall. It was small for a hyperspace transmitter, but that still meant fifty or sixty kilograms and the size of a small sideboard. They pulled it halfway out, then paused. Nico said „Wait here, I’ll get a hover pad or a roller.“, and went off to do just that.
When he returned, Roger had finished searching the place and told him that there were no other hiding spots. He did not mention the cash he had found stashed away in the kitchen. He would come back later for it.
They pulled the comm unit on the roller plate, then pushed it out of the apartment. Nico closed the door behind them, welding it shut with the laser cutter. It was not a solid seal, the cutter was not the right tool for that, but it would prevent someone from casually opening it.
They rolled the comm unit through the hallways of Binary Bloom, into an elevator, and into the low-cost housing section where the prisoners were being held.
Nico went into the first apartment that had been appropriated as a cell by himself, same as the first time he had been there. He pushed the roller inside as well.
The Qyrl eyed him suspiciously. Nico ignored him and connected the transmitter to the nearest power outlet, then switched it on and worked through the menus. He reconfigured the device into a testing mode where it would talk to itself, so that he could get the translated output.
Then he turned around and told the Qyrl: „This device has a built-in translator. Does it work? Do you understand me?“
The translator spit out a series of high-pitched sounds, and probably even more in the ultrasound range that Nico could not hear. The Qyrl perked up, its antennae twitching. Then it answered in an even higher pitch, even more of its speech in frequencies the human ear did not handle. But the translator picked it up: „Yes, the device is working.“
„Then it’s your lucky day.“, Nico said, „Because you can answer my questions. Trust me, you want to answer my questions. I’m all out of patience with you.“
„I will not.“, the translator barked back.
Nico put on a nasty grin as he replied: „That’s what you are saying now. But I’ve read about your kind and your Shimmervine. Can’t reach it now, can you? How long can you stand isolation? A day? Two days?“
„My people will notice my absence. They will blow up more of your ships if you do not release me back to them.“
Nico was not in the mood for games. „Your people think you are dead. They blinked out and have been gone for hours. You didn’t notice because we put you in medical cryo-stasis while we figured out what to do with you.“
The Qyrl began shifting colors in a rainbow pattern. The translator interpreted that as being shocked.
„You know what“, Nico continued sharply, „I’ll leave you to ponder that for a while. When I come back, you better be more talkative.“
He unplugged the comm unit before the Qyrl could respond and left the room, taking the comm unit with him.
The Qyrl did not know that he had a second one of his kind next door. He headed there next, and the conversation initially started out in much the same way, but the other Qyrl was more cooperative. After Nico had likewise threatened him with isolation, the creature gave in: „I have no doubts you would do as you say. I will answer your questions.“
Nico sat down. „Good“, he said, „That is good. So why did you attack us?“
The Qyrl answered immediately: „You have something that we want.“
„We’re pirates. You could have offered to buy it from us.“, Nico countered.
„What is the word you attribute to yourself? The translator did not convert it.“
Indeed, Nico looked at the display of the comm unit and it showed that there was no concept to express „pirates“ in Qyrl. „Right“, he told himself. „They are insectoids and symbiotes with that Shimmervine plant. Of course they don’t.“
He tried different words: „We steal things from you and other aliens and sell them. We would sell it to you if you wanted it. You know stealing, right?“
„Yes“, the Qyrl answered, „I understand what you are talking about. This is not theft. You are attacking our ships and damaging them. These are acts of war that we have ignored for too long.“