I typed quickly at the terminal in the back of the dusty dark room I found myself in, my eyes scanning the lines of barely intelligible pseudo-code I was producing in an effort to mask my true purpose. I stopped for a moment, making an effort to look as though I was concentrating and trying to think what to type next. It took a lot more effort to act the part of a hacker than it did to actually break into a system lately.
There were no sensors or cameras in the room for me to watch my back with, but I knew that behind me, there were two men with relaxed grips on small handguns. This was some mess I’d ended up in this time. I hadn’t been opposed to doing ground work, since I’d made a bit of a name for myself on the colony for my way with computers, and occasionally that intersected with the kinds of criminal conspiracies we’d immersed ourselves in. But this was more danger than I’d bargained for.
I casually brushed my hair to the side slightly to make sure my neural implant was still fully covered. I didn’t need either of the men behind me getting curious and asking why I had a sophisticated piece of cybernetics strapped to my skull.
It was pretty obvious that they didn’t intend to keep me around once I finished programming this backdoor into the nearby refinery’s security system, so it was very important that I never actually finish the work they’d coerced me into doing. I just needed to buy a little more time.
“How much longer this gonna take?” A deep, gravelly voice behind me mumbled impatiently. One of my guards was already tired of waiting for me to finish. I wasn’t sure if he felt like he had somewhere to be or if he just wanted an excuse to kill someone.
“You think th-this is easy?” I grumbled back. “It’s a security system, not a fucking home terminal. Calm d-down.”
“Just do the job, b-b-b-bitch.” The man scoffed.
I rolled my eyes at him taunting my stutter. It had gotten better with some speech therapy from Doc these past six months, but it was still there. Its nature as a result of brain damage meant I’d probably never completely repair all the damaged pathways in my brain related to speech. But I didn’t feel shy about it anymore, and I tried not to let it be an obstacle.
Ever since we’d landed on Io, things had calmed down and allowed us to return to business as usual. This half year since we arrived had finally felt like we’d settled into some sense of normalcy. Or whatever passed for normalcy for space pirates. The crew had developed into a small illicit business doing whatever work we could manage, and it had been more profitable than we could have imagined. It turned out that there was a lot of underhanded work to be done on the frontier of an infantile colony, despite it being deep in the depths of corporate territory. The tenuous rule of law hadn’t quite finished settling into place yet, and that was a breeding ground for enterprising criminals like us.
We’d put together the money to repair Theseus within the first month, and to my and Mouse’s delight, my shell had been outfitted with a number of upgrades to its structure and systems since then with the funds that came rolling in as we were trusted with more and more lucrative and dangerous work. I just wasn’t used to being the one in the line of fire, at least not with the fleshy half of my body.
I typed for another minute, then put my hand to my head as if in thought, and closed my eyes.
And immediately my inner vision exploded into view. The virtual world lit up around me as I felt the terminal in front of me expose its every component and each file hidden within its storage to my psychic touch. The network line that they’d physically hacked into an underground cable waystation extended all the way to the refinery. It gave them access to some of their systems, and showed me everything I would need to know to crack it open in an instant if I actually wanted to.
A thousand different interfaces sprang forth from all the small devices surrounding me. The personal terminals of the men behind me, and the computers of at least a dozen other people across the large complex beyond the only door. I swam through the digital ocean, expertly culling information I didn’t need and scanning each of the devices for clues to my true goal. A ledger. I had to find its physical location, so I knew where to go after I made my exit.
This job was so stupid. I literally had all the information our employer was after from a previous delve downloaded onto my own storage, but he demanded the physical terminal it was held on itself. I’d tried to talk Aisling into just flashing it onto a new terminal, but she didn’t like the idea, said it was too dangerous to mess with the guy who was paying us for this. She insisted that there must have been a reason he needed the genuine article.
And now here I was, accidentally in the depths of danger after what was meant to be a scouting mission gone terribly wrong. I was supposed to walk in and feel out the device’s location under the guise of a quick introduction on behalf of our crew, but that turned into an abduction. Turns out these guys were crazy, and they weren’t above taking a helpless IT specialist hostage to do their work for them, free of charge. Of course, I was smart enough to know what happened after that...
I seriously wished their guns were smart, so I could just shut them down and give myself some peace of mind, but they weren’t that well-funded, so they didn’t have any electronics on them I could influence. And they were not very stable people, on top of that. I was probably one wrong comment away from getting a hole in the back of my head.
I latched onto a familiar address. That was it. I immediately sent a broadcast out to Aisling, broadcasting a string of text directly to her terminal through my own psychic network. ‘Target located. Get me the fuck out of here.’
“Hey. Why’d you stop?” The gruff man asked.
I shook my head. “Just thinking. I know it can’t look fa...familiar to you.”
“The fuck you say?” I heard the telltale sound of clicking metal and opened my eyes in a moment of panic. What the hell did I say that for?! Why did everything I said have to default to biting sarcasm?!
Luckily, the man across from him must have been used to keeping the trigger-happy one in check. “Hey, chill. Just do the work.” he demanded, and I heard them both step back. I took a stabilizing breath, making a mental note to carefully vet what I was going to say around these lunatics, and continued typing my nonsense security breach program.
I barely even understood what I was putting on the screen, if it meant anything at all. Ever since I’d started having to fake actually using a computer like any normal person would, I’d had all kinds of difficulties using a terminal in a believable way. I guess I got used to operating computers on a more direct psychic level. It even felt like I had to completely teach myself to type all over again, my hands initially fumbling over the keys like someone who’d never operated a computer before when I first started making a show of it.
I’d also yet to find a parser for the language I’d learned to code in. Maybe the gaps in my knowledge were a previously hidden result of my brain damage, or maybe there was a disconnect between my simulated knowledge and my practical real-world coding skills. Lily had expressed that she’d entirely lost her coordination between her own mundane artistic abilities she’d learned back in the false world, so it probably made some sense that not everything I knew carried over to reality, either. It was odd, though, that my ability to code and understand computers through my implant was unimpeded. Maybe it was because it was a more logical skill than Lily’s. Maybe the way a machine core interacted with technology was just more intuitive.
I shook my head, tossing the thought aside. Whatever the cause of the strange narrow bands of technical incompetence I showed, it was hard to argue that I didn’t know what I was doing. The results spoke for themselves. The language I coded in with my implant didn’t match any common code I’d found elsewhere, but it worked all the same, and teaching myself to type again was as simple as climbing back into a car after you haven’t driven for a while. It felt familiar, even if my fingers didn’t want to obey me at first.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
I’d decided some time ago that it was best not to dwell on my odd shortcomings. I’d already mostly made up for them. And as long as no one who was actually competent at coding looked over my shoulder, the gibberish I was putting on the screen would be enough to fool people into thinking I was doing something technical.
Instead of closing my eyes for a long period, I took shorter breaks where I mumbled the last few lines I’d written to myself to make it sound like I was contemplating something in order to check my message. The return finally arrived: ‘Mouse and Joel are in position. We’re still setting up. Stall. We’ll light up early if you give the sign.’
Great. Killing time with the boys. That was not my favorite terminology for this, but it’s what came to mind. “Can I get some water?” I asked.
“No. Finish your job,” called the second man. I didn’t dare turn around to address him, but I could tell he was getting impatient. This wasn’t even a stall tactic, though, I was actually just pretty thirsty.
“Look... I think I’m b-barely half done here,” I sighed, continuing to work on an atrocious screen of non-code that might fool someone who’s never worked on a computer before for a few minutes if they tried to analyze it. “Aren’t either of you thirsty, too? Or need to grab some...thing to keep yourselves busy while I take care of th-this?”
With a grunt, the second man stood up and walked toward me. “Alright. Show us what you got so far, then we’ll see.”
My eyes went wide, and I slowly turned my head to the man looking over my shoulder at the screen full of technical nonsense. “Y-You can r-read this...?” I asked, my stutter thankfully partially hiding the terror in my voice.
The man raised an eyebrow. “Huh? No. Fuck no. Show me what it does so far.” He gestured at the screen. “Run it or whatever.”
Oh. He was just stupider than I thought. I gave a half-relieved, half-anxious laugh that he couldn’t call out my bullshit ‘coding’. “Umm... th-that’s not how it works. If I run it now, it’ll just trip an alarm and they’ll know there was a h...hack attempted. I’m not like... breaking into one f-feat...ure at a time or something, I’m sub-subverting their entire system at once, and th-then you’ll have complete control of it.”
He stared at me impatiently, a grimace on his face. That went entirely over his head, didn’t it? “Well how am I supposed to know how good you’re doing at this, then?” He asked directly.
I briefly searched for a more tactful way to get what I wanted to say across, but I eventually had to settle with, “You... don’t? I g-guess?” I shrugged.
He grunted and backed up again. “Then I guess you don’t get water. Hurry up and finish, then I’ll get you whatever.”
Rude. I already knew all I was getting if I finished this was a high-speed lobotomy. I sighed and went back to typing a random assortment of buzzwords and brackets.
I was glad that I could still pass as fully human, even held captive and scrutinized closely as I was. They thankfully hadn’t patted me down or looked under my clothes to see the extensive cybernetic augmentations my frankly audacious outfit hid. My baggy cargo pants hid the large storage container at my hip, while my black turtleneck pulled double duty hiding the terminal on my forearm and the port array at my neck. My hair was still long on one side, even though the left side of my head was shaved short. That was an admittedly poorly thought out aesthetic choice I’d made a couple months earlier when I decided I was tired of my long hair, but still needed some to hide my cranial implants under something. It looked kinda badass in a way, but I honestly thought it was pretty stupid after I first saw it, and it just made me look like I was some kind of crazy eccentric. I was committed to it now, though. I’d look even stupider for a while if I decided to try to fix it.
Despite my disguise, I was proud of what I was. I was an awesome psychic half-starship woman who could take full control of virtually any non-core-controlled computer system in an instant. That hadn’t changed, and I’d gotten even better at it in the past months. If only the electronic side of the world mattered, then I pretty much owned this entire colony already.
But I was also a freak of nature created and wanted by the most influential corp in the system, so hiding was in my better interest than showing off my considerably augmented body and becoming some kind of cybernetic tech tyrant.
Closing my eyes again, I saw a message from Mouse. ‘Brace on your left.’ I looked to the wall at my side, noting the thick stone. I shifted in the rolling seat, leaning to the side so I could position myself away from the offending side of the room as I continued my facade of computer work. ‘There. Should be safe there.’ He sent a moment later. He must have been using heat signatures to look through the wall. That gun really was bullshit.
“This seriously what you do all day?” The gruff man asked after he watched me shift in my chair and renew my focus on the screen. “Boring as shit.”
“You don’t s-see what I see.” I mumbled. “There’s worlds inside computers. You just have to speak the right language to them and they can sh-show you so much. Do anything for you. Machines have a lot to say if you’re w-willing to listen.”
“These geeks get so wrapped up in their tech.” I could practically hear the second man rolling his eyes, the way he spoke with such contempt. Ah, the perils of being a nerd surrounded by a bunch of tough guys. I was getting bored anyway, so I tapped the personal terminal in his pocket and erased all his contacts out of spite.
I blinked and saw ‘All in position. Ready to be in a blast zone?’
I groaned to myself and stopped typing, putting my hands down into my lap ‘Just do it.’ I sent back.
“Hmm? You finished now?” The gruff man asked. “That was quick. Thought you said you were only halfway done.”
‘Ready. Get the guy on your right to take a step forward.’ I saw from Mouse’s line.
I sighed and put on the most condescending voice I could manage. “Why don’t you ch-check it for yourself? You clearly know wh...at you’re doing, genius.”
I heard the click of a boot shifting toward me, and saw the Thunderbolt’s screen light up in my virtual senses. Before anything happened in the room, I picked up the keyboard I’d been using and held it out to my left at arm’s length to protect my face.
Nothing can prepare anyone, especially someone with no infantry combat training, for what it feels like to be at ground zero of what amounts to artillery fire.
The two behind me probably looked perplexed at my actions in the split second before the room suddenly exploded into a pile of debris behind me, an unseen shell and half the wall barreling violently through the center of the two bodies, slamming the two of them together before they became a single unrecognizable splatter of gore and broken plaster against the opposite wall.
I was peppered with stone chips and shrapnel, closing my eyes and shouting out in terror as the physical effects of being so close to an explosion wracked my senses. My ears rung and my body refused to obey me as I continued to hold out my flimsy shield, shivering even as the room fell into a deathly silence.
I couldn’t process what was happening to me in that moment. It felt like I was looking down on myself, separated from my body. I could hear gunfire in the distance, but that even felt way further away than I expected it to be. I just sat there, shaking as I tried to make sense of the world again.
“Meryll... Meryll!” Came a distant call, and suddenly I realized I hadn’t been breathing. All at once, I felt a fraction of control return to my limbs. I was sweating, and tears were running down my face. I drew in a gasp and forced my lungs to start working again. I slowly turned my head to see a man’s head poking through the massive gap in the wall Mouse’s shelling had created for me. Joel was standing at my escape route. “Hey! Don’t go into shock on me now. We need to get clear!”
I nodded slowly and stood up from my seat. I couldn’t feel my legs. Stumbling toward him, my knees gave out and I leaned up against the wall to catch myself before he grabbed my arm and pulled me outside, my senses reeling as he whipped me outside of the building.
The rapid crack of gunfire sounded from further off in the complex, where the others were obviously running interference for the rescue. “Fuck, Meryll, move. Come on. Don’t you want out of here?” He asked.
I shook my head slowly and pointed back through the hole, my hand shaking. “Still need th-the ledger,” I managed to choke out somehow, still unable to think clearly thanks to literally blowing up a few seconds ago.
He stared at me incredulously and scoffed, “Fucking hell, forget about it!”
“Just in the next room. It’ll be quick,” I mumbled, trying to drag myself back inside despite his insistent grip. I’m not sure if it was in spite of or because of the shock, but I was too stubborn to be the reason we failed this mission.
He rolled his eyes at me and lifted his rifle again as he climbed back into the hole ahead of me. “Christ, you are such a fucking pain in my ass sometimes!”