CHAPTER 20 - THIEF

Rachel led the group as they walked the other way back through the corridor, holding out her datapad with the receiver set to the frequency specified by Qoolucu, waving it around and listening closely for anything resembling a 'symphony'. Only the hiss of static could be heard.

She pointed it at every business' wall, at every large concentration of people, at every crevice or opening in the corridor's plating.

Suddenly, a patrol of four Yectkogg enforcers came out of a door and started heading down the hall. Realizing that what she was doing looked very suspicious, Rachel quickly tucked away the datapad-radio back into her pocket.

The three-legged, dark-furred aliens wore form-fitting green bodygloves, alongside black bulletproof vests and reflective-visored helmets. All three articles of clothing were emblazoned with the rounded logo of the Corporation, in gold. The security officers did not pay much attention to the group. Instead, they looked highly concerned and distressed by something. The leader, distinguishable by a taller helmet with a spike on it, occasionally barked short phrases through a microphone hidden in his helm's snout.

"Alright, I have a feeling something is up," Rachel said. She stopped in her tracks, with the others following suit, and checked the local station news, specifically the English translation. A small but overall insignificant fee had to be paid to access the site.

The Decl-Tjub Announcer

* Yectkogg Biotronics announces three new products, details in article

* New control-BCI modules bought from Abyssal Empire, do not be afraid

* Investors vote on All-Oval Audio Competition entry, details in article

* BREAKING! Violent subversive activity suspected in Decl-Tjub civilian ring. Security dispatched.

"...are we really going to be caught in the middle of a civil war again? Are you fucking kidding me?" Rachel said, and showed the headlines to the rest.

Kuw made a whining sound and leaned in to hug Rachel. "Maaaybe they're just having a bad day at the office?"

Rachel cracked up. "These people do seem to overreact… maybe you're right."

Jamaad cleared his throat. "That they do but please be careful. Artur, keep watch. Rachel, continue your search."

The catgirl crept forward with much less of a pep in her step.

Finally, a sound resembling sped-up, rhythmic whalesong began struggling to get through the squeak of static, right as Rachel pointed the antenna at a narrow, open corridor deep in the commercial area. "It's there!" she gestured at the shadow-cloaked opening, "Judging by the specific distortions in the signal, it's around a corner or two."

Artur could not stop himself from doing a little dance… if it could be called that. He jumped, sending the clang of metal echoing through the hall upon landing, then slowly turned from side to side like a tank turret. "Let's go!"

He broke off from the group and rushed towards the corridor, hand on holster, clearly trying to not yell a bloodcurdling warcry, or more likely a statement of his name. By the time Jamaad turned around, the only trace of the weapons officer was a series of receding, rapid footsteps.

"Oh my God, he just ran in!" Elektra shouted.

"S– should we try and save him?"

"Yes. Follow me. Slowly," Jamaad said, his face covered by his hand.

Kuw clearly still wasn't taking this too seriously, and just hummed some fast-paced ditty as she trailed behind.

The powerful, aftermarket flashlight on the captain's datapad brightly illuminated the narrow yet tall corridor, which seemed to be some kind of maintenance access that had been mysteriously left open. The walls and ceiling had more holes and hanging cables than the ship's corridors did, and that was saying something. On occasion, a brief burst of sparks flashed from a frayed section of wire. The 'slowly' turned to 'quickly' as the officers tried their best to dodge these sparks as they made their way forward in a line. They failed: Elektra got a small hole burnt in her sleeve, while Kuw's squirrel-like tail got a tuft of its fur caught and ripped on some protruding rods. The shaky beam of Jamaad's flashlight illuminated only gauges and smaller access hatches.

Soon, angry and panicked but unintelligible voices became heard from around a corner, accompanied by clanking. Jamaad turned off his flashlight, plunging the corridor into darkness. He turned on the camera, cranked up the exposure, and poked it into the unseen depths of the corridor while making a shushing gesture to the others.

On the slanted screen, he could see and hear Artur furiously rummaging through some kind of maintenance closet, lit up by a dim yellowish lamp. The walls were covered with oddly-shaped vents and not-quite-familiar machinery. With his bare hands, he ripped off vent cover after vent cover, letting them clunk onto the grimy floor.

"YOU WON'T ESCAPE!" he howled as he leaned into one of the vents…

Only to recoil as a gloved hand punched him right in the muzzle.

It took a whole second for the wolf-man to realize the audacity of the thief. He reached towards his holster and aimed into the vent, crouching down. An inhuman, almost croaking scream was heard from inside, followed by frantic clambering that suddenly stopped.

"Weapons Officer Artur! Stand the fuck down!" Jamaad hollered.

Artur's ears flattened as he looked at the captain. "Sorry!"

The group cautiously entered the room. "Are they there?" Rachel said, avoiding standing lined up with the vent.

A low and muffled voice, speaking in broken and clearly alien English, echoed from the crevice. "Me am stuck! Help, help! Don't kill I!"

"I guess they are," Rachel said and knelt down, still not quite looking inside. "Tell us if you have the sphere!"

Elektra shuffled forward and added "You have no reason to lie, because we'll pull you out anyways and check. Just come clean for the love of Christ."

Kuw giggled as she finally peeked into the hole, seeing the yect thief's gray-covered red backend in the darkness. "Ya know, this works in human movies thaaaat I watched, but it always seemed unrealistiiic. I guess this is why?"

"Fine fine! I have the sphere! I wanted sell to black market. Little money. Me am sorry! Please no kill-y! Please, I have starving family to feed! Son no get even basic education. Wife be dying of tumors that we have just too little money to fix. Please at least don't give me to enforcers! I will sink into debt. Let me gooooooo!"

"Well now I feel bad," Artur spat onto a loose crate, "Jamaad, I forgive this guy. Let's not report him. Hey lad, want me to get you out?"

Jamaad nodded in approval.

"Yes yes please."

The thief whimpered as Artur took hold of two out of three of his ankles and yanked. When the yect did not budge, he yanked again, still taking care to not break any bones.

The hapless individual's semi-emaciated body clattered and scraped across the inside of the vent as the powerful arms finally pulled him out and held him upside down. The sphere fell out of the pocket of his threadbare gray vest and began bouncing around the room like a particularly luminant rubber ball. Artur's datapad slipped out soon after, with its brick-like casing creating a dent in the floor plating. It was a wonder that the thief even managed to carry that thing for long.

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Artur immediately dropped his would-be robber and clumsily lunged forwards, falling muzzle-first onto the floor as he tried and failed to catch the miniaturized orb. After bouncing off several walls and pipes, seemingly possessing its own life with the mentality of a terrified fly, it began rolling towards an open floor vent leading into the bowels of the station ring…

Rachel crouched as her tail and rear waggled for a brief few moments. With a piercing and incoherent yell, she pounced towards the orb in the same way a cat would pounce at a fleeing mouse. Tumbling forward in the comparatively low gravity, she slammed against the wall. Immediately after recovering from her daze, she triumphantly held up the sphere in her hand.

"Are you okaaaay dear?" Kuw paced over to her.

Rachel simply nodded as she stood up and pulled the relmai into a hug, handing the recovered orb to Artur.

"Huh. Not a crack. Not a dent. Chimera engineering. D… that's something. Thanks Rachel," he then stowed it away in the box, on a padded pillow. After this, he picked up his datapad, clearly similarly resilient.

The thief stood up with a pained groan and backed against the wall, still in shock. He wanted to say something, but clearly couldn't.

Kuw tilted her head. "Why don't ya and your family just leeeave? You're in aaaa spaceport. I heard the Bulwark is a socialist state. You would be cared for. Anyways what's your name siiir?"

"I is Tyek-vua. No, can't leave. See?"

Tyek extended one of his three clawed arms. On his forearm was a barely-visible light that blinked red. "All employees like I have a tracker from birth. Have to pay to remove it."

Artur scratched his head. "Elektra has a scalpel and anesthesia over at the ship… why not just cut it out?"

Elektra's previously neutral expression turned into a smile.

Tyek shook his head. "No no no, they'll know. They'll find me."

Artur chuckled. "We could do it just before departing. What are they going to do, chase us into Bulwark territory? The Bulwark hates Yectkogg like they do all Abyssal buddies."

"My family here, yes, that would be possible. But me have friends. Friends who won't want to leave. Including friends in other stations, else other systems. They will face the punishment, if I and my family illegally leave."

Elektra's smile sublimated like a drop of water in a vacuum. Artur similarly went quiet.

Jamaad checked something on his datapad. "You said you have 'just' too little money to cure your mother's cancer. If it's less than a thousand umecs too little, we can pay for it."

Tyek's loop-like head-growths suddenly flared out. "Seven hundred and fifty Yectkogg Scrip!"

Jamaad looked back to the screen. Swipe, swipe, tap tap tap. "That's… five hundred point sixteen umecs. Not much at all. Do you guys have that system where your accounts automatically convert umecs?"

"Yes yes, they say more money injected into economy from alien civilizations - good."

After exchanging the relevant data, the money was transferred to Tyek's account by swiping the backs of the datapads together. Unlike Jamaad's datapad, the design of which was very similar to antique equivalents of the device dating just over two hundred years to the past, the yect datapad was shaped like a hexagon and had a translucent casing, exposing the crooked circuitry underneath, as well as a set of three cameras, each in a different corner. It also had small handles on its sides that fingers could slip into. Yet, it fulfilled the same functions, roughly. A pocket computer was just too convenient a thing to not adopt, and simple enough to convergently evolve in any space-age society that possessed individuality. The combination of the principles of physics and common-sense life-logic was a powerful homogenizing force that optimized many aspects of society, like an energy curve optimized the energy of a physical system. But unlike an energy curve, this socio-technological curve had a certain friction to it that resulted in slight functional and aesthetic variations in form, informed by the physiology and preferences of different species.

Tyek's snouted face beamed with happiness, his sharp teeth glinting in a wide smile. A look that could only be borne by a broken man finally finding a measure of respite, by the kindness of a stranger– a stranger that not more than ten minutes ago wanted him punished. "Thank so much! I– my wife owes she life to you now!"

"No problem," Jamaad said and looked around. "I think we should leave before someone we don't want here is attracted by all the racket we caused. Tyek, follow us."

They quietly walked in a line, then turned a corner.

Black ballistic vests. Visored helmets glinting in the dim light. It was a pair of Yectkogg enforcers, and they were staring the group down. Without skipping a beat, the one in front began speaking, in much better, but still accented English compared to Tyek. "Non-employees, we are sorry to inform you that these areas are only for employees. You are trespassing. Please, all four non-yect individuals, pay a fine of one thousand umecs."

Jamaad sighed. There was no point in resisting them when the ship still had days until it could leave. A thought crossed his mind, that if this was the last day, then he would have ordered Artur to 'subdue' them, with cybernetically-enhanced haymakers if not bullets, and he would make a run for it with his crew. But as it was, he could only submit.

Everyone's mood soured as they scanned their datapads against the policeman's. Even Tyek looked away as he leaned against the wall. Another train of thought flashed through: what if they fined them or Artur again, this time for damaging the vent covers?

But no, the officers silently turned around to escort the five out of the tunnel, then never even looked back as they continued their patrol; they looked very hurried by something. Tyek made off without a fine.

"Why didn't they fleece you tooooo?" Kuw asked, as soon as they were in the bright of the main hall again.

"I work as a janitor! I can go there legal," Tyek looked to the sides, then leaned into Artur's ear, tiptoeing on all three of his feet to reach it, "I get paid by task done not by hour, thank for giving me easy job of screwing the vents back on. Also thank for not shooting me in the ass."

Artur snorted. But then he felt rather saddened by this man treating his once-imminent death so nonchalantly. But he said nothing. It was obvious by then that terror and misery were a common aspect of life on this station.

"We're going back to the ship," Jamaad said. "Goodbye Tyek, may we meet again someday."

Rachel looked into her datapad. "What's your Spark handle?"

Kuw, meanwhile, gave him a brief but tight hug. With the yect's contact information acquired, the group retraced their steps towards the elevator, in resigned silence. The trip back up the central pillar was quiet too.

Patch greeted them at the airlock. "Greetings again. You were not away for a long time. Why, then, are you all so weary?" it intoned, its many camera-stalks inspecting the tired faces of the crew.

"This station is like Hell," Elektra said.

Rachel explained everything. Mwiu. The bar. The thief. The alleged insurgency.

"Extrapolating the stated events: it appears that if you had stayed on the station for the duration of the repairs, your situation would have gotten worse," it then paused and noticed an exasperation building up in the others. "Deactivating situationisation protocols: I recommend that we stay shipboard… Activating empathy-emulator module: Addendum: I also recommend that we make a brief entrance to pick up Mwiukwou and her friends before departing."

"We will… This is new though," Elektra said.

"I spent the time after the systems checkup on downloading new modules that I have not seen before," the robot replied.

"Are you sure it won't come with some kind of adware…" Rachel went deep into thought for a few moments, "Or that stuff that's banned in most of the Alliance… covert-currency or something. That one 'digs' for using programs and stuff. Something like that."

"There are channels outside of regular distribution channels."

"I thought you were against this kind of thiiiiing?" Kuw chuckled, "Turned around so fast when you have new daaaata to gain?"

"Threat of infection from legal download from Yectkogg servers: high, software likely lower quality compared to hacked version. Additional benefit: gives no support to Abyssal client state. Thus: benefit outweighs set 'follow the law' value, allowing my evaluation function to permit me to peruse outsider channels."

Artur snorted. "All these Oval-class mental gymnastics... Just pirate everything. Nobody will arrest you."

The conversation stopped in its tracks. Everyone present looked at Artur. "What? Back in the BFR I knew nobody who paid for any soft. Our gov't doesn't give a fuck really. I could literally look up and download any shit with a cracked lifetime subscription."

"Huh," Rachel said, "and why don't the Terran corpos do anything about it?"

"The fuck are they gonna do? Our gov't is socialist. Terran capitalists have influence over the heavy industries and such where the window is open. Not software dev. Even if you can't find a Terran pirate site in the web-dumps with what you want then someone will sneak in a flash drive with all the new version within a week, and put it up on our FangNet."

The interstellar internet did not work in the same way as the planetside internet, which remained essentially unchanged in its format since centuries ago. Large amounts of data were beamed to special depots located at the edges of star systems, then compressed, encrypted, and sent to other star systems using automated courier drones. These were often slower than manned couriers, due to the immense volume of various messages, lightspeed delays, and the low quality of the drones' drives, but were reliable enough for civilian communications. Among the data sent and refreshed every day were entire archives of websites… and due to the encryption, it could not be detected if something illegal was being sent.

"You know, we still have some food from FE-01. I want to eat something nice," Rachel said as she set off floating down the hallway, pulling Kuw behind herself.