“Not particularly, but seeing as we’re gonna be here a minute, why not?” Shaw muttered, shuffling through Doc’s possessions and finding a handgun that he chambered immediately and set to his belt.
‘He has Doc’s sidearm.’ I immediately sent to Aisling and then continued “That thing you were waving around. That’s no ordinary knife.”
“You could say that.” He produced the knife again, and with my sensors, I took a closer look as it happened this time. It actually looked as if floating motes of metal were extending straight from his palm and forming together into a solid vaguely knife-like shape. I still had no idea what it was he was wielding, but I had an idea of its function then. He was somehow using something to reshape simple matter on the fly.
I tried to query the general area of his body, and received a few pings back from electronics. He had implants. I guess I should have assumed that much if he was packing some kind of fine particle control tech; he would need a way to control it. I briefly wondered if I might be able to hack it, but since he had a gun now, it hardly mattered.
“That all it can do?” I asked next.
He smirked “Wouldn’t you like to know? Your captain out there plugging questions into you for me? How about this. You answer my questions, I’ll answer yours. Far as I care to, anyway. We can make a game out of it.”
That was a dangerous prospect. He already knew far more about me than I wanted any stranger that could potentially spread the news should. “Deal.” I said reluctantly “As far as we care to.”
He nodded “What’s your name?” he asked. I was surprised that he asked for something so… mundane.
“Meryll.” I answered begrudgingly.
“And Meryll, how does someone like you end up with a crew of… privateers?” he asked in an almost mocking tone.
I shrugged my shoulders. It was a really long story at this point “Serendipity, I guess you would say. I stumbled onto them by happenstance and I liked it here. Things just fell into place and I ended up in this thing. My turn.” I couldn’t keep letting him ask questions without retaliating “Why’d you take the supplies?”
He let out a laugh “Why do you think? Densely packed food’s worth a lot of money. You steal stuff cause it’s worth money.” He looked down at Doc and shrugged his shoulders “He your boyfriend or something?”
“He’s gay.” I said flatly. What could this line of questioning possibly be leading to?
“Huh. Wouldn’t have thought. Well, suppose that makes the next question easier. You’re kinda cute, wanna blow this place when we get to Earth?” he raised his eyebrows and smiled toward the core.
“I’M gay!” I declared, losing my patience with the man “Was this seriously just an excuse to hit on me?!”
“I mean, kinda, yeah, but I guess I gotta think of something else to talk about now.” He wasn’t taking this seriously at all. Even if I was interested in getting away from Theseus, I knew that he probably just saw dollar signs at the prospect of selling off a living ship core to someone “Guess I could ask then, what’cha think of that captain? I mean, I gotta say when she had that gun pointed at me and did that thing with the ship, hoo… that… that caused some interesting feelings, you know?” he chuckled “Oh wait, that was you, wasn’t it! You pulled that maneuver with the ship and made me drop the big guy!”
“I did.” I said slowly, trying to calm myself from being overwhelmingly angry at the man who was currently holding Doc and I hostage and not taking any of this seriously “What’s your plan back on Earth?”
“Hide for awhile. Cash in on some of my investments and lay low. Look for a new crew that’s not as stupid and into drugs. Skulls will lose interest before too long.” He sighed, actually seeming to drop the act and becoming serious “Not gonna lie, this is a pretty big setback, but I’ve had worse.”
“How the fuck have you had worse than this?” I asked, genuinely curious now.
“Actually not the first time I’ve been in this situation.” He admitted “First time I’ve had a sexy lesbian starship to talk me through it, but not the first time I’ve had to hijack a ship full of people that hate me.”
“I’m gonna make it perfectly clear right now that I don’t like you.” I told him flatly, to which he held out his arms and smiled as if sarcastically asking ‘why not?’
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‘Okay, I don’t think I can stand talking to this guy another minute, are you almost done with that door?’ I pinged Aisling. I looked, and Mouse was indeed cutting through the door right that minute.
“Tell them to back off now.” Shaw demanded as he started to see sparks coming through the door “I got a hostage, remember?”
‘He’s demanding Mouse stop breaking in.’ I pinged her again. And a moment later, the torch stopped. I looked out to see Aisling signaling him down. We’d have to try something else. ‘What about that gun Mouse had? Could it punch through the door?’
‘Yeah, and the rest of Theseus.’ Aisling replied ‘Use that thing in here and we’re all sucking vacuum. We can’t ambush him from out here, you gotta do something with what you have.’
‘With what I have? I have a dangerous bandit, with the only gun, who’s physically way stronger than me, and an unconscious medical professional!’ I reminded her, shaking my head. What was there to use in here? I looked around inside my heart. Was there something I was missing? There was life support, but I couldn’t drain that without also killing Doc. The artificial gravity? That could cause some confusion, but that’d probably just get Doc threatened again. At best, I could use the intercom to annoy him. And the rest of the consoles were just for monitoring my own vitals.
‘Come on Meryll, there’s gotta be something else. What have you learned about the guy?’
‘He’s a cocky asshole. He’s been through some shit and actually has some skills though. He has an implant that lets him control some kind of shaped metal, I don’t really know how. That’s probably how he escaped.’
‘Play to his ego. Get him to show off that implant.’
Maybe she had something there. The implant could show some remote vulnerabilities if I could see it in action a few more times. I trusted Aisling to know what she was doing, so I turned the intercom back on “So that… thing. Tool. You control that with your mind, right?” I asked.
He looked a little surprised “Well, yeah. How’d you know?” he asked.
“I’ve got an actual starship grafted to my brain, genius, how do you think? I understand how this kind of thing works by now.” I watched him shrug his shoulders “I’m asking cause I’m interested. Maybe I’ll get one myself. Can it shape into more than just a knife?”
He debated talking about it for a moment, and then finally said “There’s not much of the material, so I can only make small things. And it starts acting weird if you try to let it get too far from your body. It’s why I use a knife. Short and simple. But you can make tools too. Screwdriver, wrench, hammer.” He spun the shifting metal around in his hand as it made each of the devices rapidly. I noticed a lot of activity in the implant as he did it, and I was starting to learn how it operated. “Not on the market though. Stole this right out of some Almaty fucker’s brainstem. You know they were still hiding out here this long after the revolution? Think it might have been the guy’s pet project, though, cause I ain’t seen word of it since then. Lucky I know a good ripper who can put something that deep in me. So no, I don’t think you’re gonna be getting one. I keep pretty close tabs on a lot of military and corpo secrets, and I think I would’ve caught something like what I got if it was more than a fluke. I’m what most people call an information broker. Sell and trade secrets like this. So I get a lot of leads on interesting tech like this.”
I had to hold my breath as I saw him pull Doc close and put his gun to his head “So that’s my big fun tech secret. How about you? How does a human being end up with the ability to control a starship. No holding back this time, I think he wants to hear too.” He tapped the gun to Doc’s temple.
Great. I actually had to tell him what I knew “Look, you don’t have to shoot him, I’ll tell you what I know.” I started, then let out a sigh into the lubricant. This was really something I didn’t want to leave the crew, but he had us. “I have this condition called Arthausen Syndrome.” I started.
Before I could continue, he quietly mouthed the words himself and he pulled the gun away from Doc’s head to smile, clapping his hands together slowly “Ohoho, that’s a name I’ve heard before. Tell me more.”
“Wait… then you know what I am?” I asked. Could this shithead seriously know what was going on with me?
Before he could answer, Doc suddenly lunged up at the man and started to struggle for the gun, actually getting it near Shaw’s neck before he became aware enough to start pushing back. How long had he been waiting for an opportunity, I had to wonder. But I knew Shaw was stronger if he could wrestle Joel to the ground. This was our only opportunity. I had to do something.
“Son of a bitch.” Doc grumbled as he tried to turn the gun up at the man. The earlier rapid activity in Shaw’s implant gave me a good avenue to break in while we were talking, but I couldn’t do much more than short it out for the moment. He seemed surprised when the knife wouldn’t form in his hand, so he just grabbed the gun with both of his hands and renewed his effort to turn it toward Doc.
Thinking quick, I sent the signal to open the core module. It took a moment for the void to shut down, and the metal sphere to start opening up, but it was fast enough. Doc was losing the battle, and it was almost to the point where all Shaw would have to do would be to pull the trigger.
That’s when I popped up out of the goop, still holding my breath so I wouldn’t have to retrain my lungs again just yet, and flung a large armful of lubricant directly at Shaw.
He flinched and immediately got some on his hands, giving Doc the leverage he needed to wrench it away. Doc stood up quickly and kept the gun trained at Shaw, panting hard as I retched my lungs out onto the floor. Doc gave me a nod of approval before he waved the gun at him “Don’t you dare fucking move.” He demanded.
“Don’t shoot him.” I managed to choke out despite still recovering from my all-too rapid transition between realities, leaning over the edge of my core module “He knows-“
“Yeah, I caught that.” Doc said, holding the pistol with both hands as Shaw lifted his hands up in surrender once more, a look of exhausted annoyance on his face that he was still dripping lubricant. “Go on. You like doing it so much, keep talking.” Doc demanded between heavy breaths.