Ilise wiped the sweat that had formed on her upper lip and let out an exhale of relief just as the message disappeared and turned back into her list of crimes. Good. To Charyd and the pirates and anyone else, she would look like a traitor. The alpha- code was a military marker for deserters. They didn’t need to know what the rest of the code stood for, if they even bothered to look at this list. But Ilise knew better. Somebody else, knew better. They knew that Ilise would take the Darkstorm back and deliver it to the provided coordinates.
Good. She still had an ally.
“Tony, I hope you captured that offline.”
“For you, always,” Tony replied.
“Good. Now, can you show me what Squilla is playing around with? Without her knowing?”
“I’ve been waiting for you to ask,” Tony responded, and he sounded like he was grinning.
When her docupad flashed again, it was a projection of a screen on top of the glass surface. It was hard to read with the additional information scrolling in the background on the glass, but she also knew that it meant if Squilla was to look into what she was doing, she would be seeing the horrible game of a snake trying not to eat its own tail rather than the code hovering barely a few centimetres above the glass. The brilliance of Tony always continued – with his normal flair, Ilise noted when the snake ate its tail and instead of ending the game the rest of the tail broke off into individual sections and each turned into a ghost, chasing the head.
“Now, I’m not that good at coding, so please narrow it down to lock down protocols.”
“You want out of here?” Tony asked even as he shifted the code on the screen around.
“Please and thank you,” Ilise said and looked at one of the cameras then focused back on the code just as Tony cleared most of the screen for her except for ten lines that extended so far out that they almost circled her completely in a loop. Tony was ever helpful, wanting to follow’s Ilise’s directions in getting them back to Cadoon and in their good graces, even if he himself didn’t seem that in love with the idea anymore.
“Good luck,” Tony said. “I fucking hate that shrimp. She’s too good.”
“You love her, and you know it,” Ilise countered but her voice was far off.
“I love a person who challenges me – but she is a nemesis, not a rival."
Ilise smiled and thought back on when she and Tony had trained together and pushed each other while the Darkstorm technology was being created. Of all the people for her to lose to, she was glad it was Tony and then proud to be paired up with him as his Captain. It had made her so happy to receive the news that she had literally kissed the precious paper letter – an old-fashioned Cadoon custom even though the high-tread count paper probably cost more than her salary for three months.
Odis was there when she did it and he didn’t stop making fun of her for it for months, even if that meant they were no longer going to be working together. It did mean that Ilise would finally be free of the desk jobs they had both been relegated to when their team was dissolved and Ilise’s training with Tony was finished. With how crazy the last few weeks had been, she longed for the desk job with Odis again. Failing to deliver at that location would probably make the wanted poster real to the point she would have to probably actually join this stupid crew to keep them from getting caught.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
When Tony flashed something on the screen, Ilise got back into the code and focused on the individual symbols around her, trying to find the one that was out of place and revealed where Squilla had decided to insert her own custom code. Like Tony, it was not simple if/else statements and the lines of code were locked with not just “admin” privileges, but “SQUILLA-BEATS-TONY-admin" privileges.
A constant one up-ing each other game on the admin level was impressive. The fact that Squilla could even keep up with Tony even more so and it made Ilise think that Squilla would have been a great candidate to train with Tony back before his integration. She would fall for the bait and do a step down like a snake chasing its own tail. Ilise put a bit of new code around all of the admin privileges settings, but this was a simple statement of if access was too high, don’t do the following code. Ilise did not even have the rights to change the code, in fact, it would not do anything but scare Squilla into looking elsewhere with the sudden insert of code.
While waiting on Squilla to take the bait, Ilise copied and pasted the exact same code right where the door locks were. With the change of the private room door settings to a constant true. Tony caught on and joined in copying the false code elsewhere and pasting the fake door setting everywhere. Ilise stood up, still tapping away at her pad, weaving it around as if it was a kids toy sketching designs instead of a touch screen as she got closer to the door of her room. Before they had finished doing six hundred lines of code change, Tony’s rights got changed and so did her code. Everything reverted, except the door setting.
The swooshing sound and hallway air were both quite refreshing. Except for the fact that the door barely opened at all before it stopped.
Ilise poked her head out of the tiny gap. There was nobody else in the hall to watch her try to squeeze her way out of her room. It was embarrassing. When she finally made it out into the hall – save for one boot stuck firmly in her room – she was collapsed on the ground and sweating more than she had when racing against Alice in the gym.
“Sorry about that,” Tony said in the communicator in her ear, but he didn’t sound sorry at all. He probably saved the video and would send it to Charyd later.
Ilise scowled and though she could have just turned her foot to get the rest of her out into the hall, instead, she yanked hard enough to leave the boot behind even if her foot made it free.
“Where are the others?”
Tony didn’t answer her question and Ilise reached through the gap to collect her boot. She slipped it back on and kept the velcro loose enough to leave the article behind again if she had to.
“Tony? Don’t you—”
“We’ve got a problem,” Tony’s voice interrupted her but it didn’t come from the communicator. It was through the ship’s speakers and the faint echo revealed that it wasn’t just in the hall where the private rooms were. He also sounded much more serious than before.
Earlier, it was a game to him – watching Ilise struggle with the code and then out the door.
Now… something was wrong.
Ilise, recognizing Tony’s serious tone, immediately got up with the idea to run to help. She had a direction toward the dock when she heard Charyd’s panicked scream of, “She’s gone!”
Ilise slid into the dock as Charyd was clutching and pulling at his hair, his face one of complete devastation and his entire body shaking with minor tremors. Squilla was still – her swimmerets no longer clacking away at her keyboard to try and stop Tony and Ilise from breaking her code.
The Cadoon captain made a motion with one hand out of sight, just in case, that she knew Tony would catch and recognize.
A moment later, one of the screens on the dock flickered for barely even a blink and Ilise knew that her command was obeyed. Tony was in the systems that Squilla was unable to lock him out of. Knowing his personality, he was probably locking himself down with some code or building a backdoor that Squilla wouldn’t be able to catch.
It was the perfect moment to take control and—
“What are you doing?” Scooball asked. She seemed to be the only one somewhat normal, if Ilise could ignore the fact that Scooball ripped her earring off and was clutching it tight.
“What happened?” Ilise asked.
When Scooball spoke, it was only three words but those three words sent a shiver down Ilise’s spine, not only for how devastating they sounded, but also for what they meant.
“Somebody got Alice.”
All of the screens on the dock, even the one to open Ilise’s room, had Alice’s bounty picture enlarged and the flashing red banner had turned green.