Corebound Chapter 40 (Patreon)

Jacob avoided the aliens because he suspected they wanted something from him, at least that eiraxin woman probably did. That didn’t mean he didn’t check up on them from time to time through the security feed.

He thought they would be attempting to get past his drones the first chance they got, but honestly, they weren’t doing much of anything. Most were staying within the hangar or working on the ship, while a few were roaming around the corridors, being nosey. But just the normal type of nosiness that people had with unfamiliar environments. He knew the station AI had given their vessel a clean bill of health as it was, but he also understood that looking at something yourself could go a long way to easing any anxiety.

“Trust but verify,” he muttered. It felt awkward going through the video feeds outside the virtual apartment, but he didn’t want to intrude while the three were still getting used to their new bodies.

He glanced up, and even though he couldn’t see through the wall, he knew Barry’s drone was still sitting lifeless outside the security office. The man was a bit of an enigma to Jacob. When Jacob first managed to leave the virtual world for a drone body, he barely went back. Sure, it was nice spending time being human, but even with the impressive simulation of life, the virtual space felt hollow to him.

He shook his head as he scrolled to a new feed. To each their own. The next feed showed a group of the same gorilla-like aliens as Chalto. They were tentatively exploring the rooms near their hangar.

After watching them for a few minutes and seeing nothing of interest or concern, Jacob moved on to the next. The eiraxin couple was making out in a side room, and he quickly moved to a different feed.

He didn’t need or want to see where that was going. The next image showed two more eiraxin women. They were sitting in one of the large cafeterias, playing a game that looked a bit like Scrabble, but with colored and lettered cubes instead of tiles. They reminded him of the wooden blocks that children might play with, only smaller and more decorated.

Jacob was curious about the game, so he zoomed in closer and studied it in more detail. Then he groaned.

It wasn’t a game at all. It was a message to him. A row of blocks was sitting with a very specific sentence spelled out on them in eiraxin.

“Jacob, can we talk?”

She knew he was keeping tabs on them. Jacob recognized one of the eiraxin women. It was the same one who had the calculating gleam in her eye when he met with Chalto. He suspected she would be the one to approach him, and it looks like he was right.

“Nope,” he said, flipping away from the feed.

Her unorthodox attempt to contact him proved that she was smart, and that meant trouble. He didn’t want to pit himself against the unknown woman, so he would avoid her like the plague until they finally left.

With his daily voyeurism out of the way, he hopped out of the body and went back to work.

Thankfully, not everything that was going on was an annoyance. Hallik and Sha’la had both gotten back to him, and the news was good. Word of his power core deliveries was getting around, and the demand for the cores had actually gone up, driving the price even higher.

Sha’la was ecstatic about that, because she made more money, but also because it had been easy for her to line up trade contracts for the station. Had she not been the only independent source of purchasing the cores, he doubted it would have been that easy to convince people. The problem was that her trade contracts were for a station she didn’t even work at or reside on. It also didn’t help that Jacob’s station was way out in the ass end of nowhere.

Still, ten merchants had picked up material contracts to deliver goods in exchange for power cores. It would still be a few months before the first shipments arrived, but he was fine with that.

Hallik’s news, while not as profitable, was still good. The mercenary had spoken with a few of his colleagues and contacts. Unlike Sha’la, the amuni man couldn’t convince his merchant contacts to risk such a trip. He didn’t have the same standing as Sha’la did when it came to trading. The man had still convinced the Bounty Association and more than one of his colleagues to set up shop on their station, so that was something.

Jacob still didn’t know how he felt about that. He did a little digging on the Bounty Association. At first, he thought it was just some third-party entity that accepted and distributed bounties for the Astryx Council, but it turned out they were part of the government, similar to the US Marshals, only with less oversight and vetting, since bounty hunters weren’t government employees but independent contractors.

It didn’t take Jacob long to figure out why the Astryx had set up such a system. Why bear most of the cost of finding and apprehending criminals to private enterprises when you could offload it to private enterprises? A few less-than-savory individuals joining the association was a small price to pay when it meant saving billions every year, probably even trillions. He knew the Astryx was composed of dozens of different species and covered nearly a twentieth of the galactic arm that Earth was on.

Jacob couldn’t recall the name of the arm, not because the memory was stolen from him, just because he never paid much attention in science class. The only thing he remembered from those lectures was that it was considered a minor arm of the galaxy. That’s the only reason Jacob even recognized it on a map when he was searching.

During that search, he also learned more about the dead zone. It was no wonder humanity had never detected alien signals. The area of space that the Concord Imperium had destroyed cut straight across the galactic arm and ran for hundreds of light-years. Earth was not in the center of the dead zone, but it was well within that area of space. Only sheer dumb luck and maybe sabotage aboard Melody had stopped Earth from joining all the other dead worlds.

He was certain that some of the world’s recovered or were even spared as Earth had been, but if they were using radio to communicate like humanity, it would probably be decades before anything popped up on sensors back on Earth. And if they had transitioned past crude radio, like the Astryx members, humanity would never know, because they didn’t have the ability to detect faster-than-light communications.

That did leave one burning question unanswered. What was on the opposite side of the dead zone? It was clear that space was chock full of life, so he did not doubt that other species existed past that void in space. Perhaps he would find out after he fixed Melody’s hull.

***

Franky double checked the cameras in the room to make sure Jacob wasn’t watching. There was no blinking light or anything to indicate they were active, but Franky had discovered a little trick to keep track of the man’s surveillance. He pinged the local power converter and asked for a power draw report. Since only four people had access to station systems, it was easy to tell when the power draw increased, even minutely.

The report came back, and Franky grunted in annoyance. The man had been watching a few minutes ago, but his daily check was over with, because the power spike had ceased.

While it annoyed Franky to be spied on, he was glad that Jacob was so damn predictable. If they had been opponents in a game, Franky would have destroyed him without even resorting to any underhanded tactics.

He chuckled at that thought as he made his way to the job terminal. One of his favorite methods for defeating his opponents in tournaments was getting them banned. It wasn’t easy, but he had perfected the method over the years. A small USB stick with a banned program and auto installer was all he needed. He would wait until the person was distracted with something else, usually some hot woman that he paid to flirt with them. Then he would reach behind his computer, pretending to check his cables, then slip the device into their computer. Most tournaments had people who would verify any programs that were running on a device after a match; once it was discovered, that person got banned, and even if they beat Franky, he still won.

Certain tournament setups made that impossible, but he had other methods. A keyjacker, which was a lot like a keylogger, but was specifically designed to kick in only when a certain program was running, worked the best. It would hijack the keyboard input and either delay it or simply omit the key press entirely. Most gamers blamed their keyboard or mouse for the intermittent issues, if they ever noticed them at all.

A keyjacker was more difficult to get onto his opponents’ devices. A USB stick would work, but Franky had been forced to stop using that method after someone was busted for doing something similar in another gaming tournament.

Since that method was off the table, he learned all about social engineering. Once he did, he never looked back. Sending people random emails never worked; people were wise to that. What did work was getting a hot girl to flirt with his opponent. They would give the guy a fake name and get his target’s email address. Then Franky would send them an email from that ‘girl’ with a picture or link to some random chick’s racy photos. Once they clicked on that link, he had them.

The best part was that he could do it weeks or months in advance, as long as he knew who was in the tournaments. He always hid an activation date in the programs he built, keeping the program inactive until the day of the tournament. Since the programs were handcrafted and tested by him, they weren’t on any anti-virus registry or publicly available, making it rare that the infected computers ever caught the program in time.

And even if they did detect it when it activated on the tournament day, what were they going to do?

Unfortunately, tournaments were beginning to wise up to all the cheating, so some were starting to ban any outside devices and required all attendees to use tournament-provided resources. Franky avoided those tournaments, or he would have been higher ranked. Part of the reason was that the risk of losing was too high, but also because he had a very specific mouse and keyboard setup that he liked to use, and the tournaments weren’t going to offer the specially modified devices.

He shook away the memories as he reached the terminal. Over the last few days, he had queried the AI relentlessly to learn what he needed to do. As it turned out, it was rather easy to jump ranks, especially when your direct boss was dead, and no other candidates were vying for the position.

Franky checked the terminal and smiled, seeing that his efforts had paid off. He was now a Maintenance Supervisor.

When he checked his new authority, he cursed. “The fuck is this shit?”

He still didn’t have access to the hangar. The AI wouldn’t provide him with information on the security clearance of each level either. He had to hope that the Maintenance Manager role would give him the access he needed, or he was going to have to come up with another plan. He couldn’t go any further than that, because the only other role before the Head of Maintenance was the Maintenance Director. Since that role reported directly to Jacob, it meant Jacob would be alerted if Franky suddenly asked to be promoted.

That wouldn’t go over well for Franky.

Thankfully, he wouldn’t have to wait days this time for the role approval. “AI?”

“Yes, Maintenance Supervisor Franky D?”

“There is some emergency maintenance that needs to be completed, but I don’t have access to those areas, and our manager is gone. I would like to request to be the interim manager until the position is filled or my application is accepted for the position.”

“One moment while I verify your request.”

Franky knew this was a gamble, but he was betting that the AI was just as stupid as he thought it was. If it wasn’t and actually checked the station to find where the supposed emergency maintenance was required, he would be shit out of luck.

After a tense wait, the AI finally responded.

“Interim Management role approved. I have forwarded your request to the Maintenance Director for review.”

If Franky’s drone had a mouth, it would have been smiling ear to ear. He checked his new authority and couldn’t help but chuckle. It said he had full access to the hangar, but he wasn’t about to trust a system that Jacob controlled.

He made his way through the maintenance corridors and stopped at the same pressure hatch as before. Without hesitation, he opened the hatch and stepped inside. The AI was silent as he stood there, and the ship that would be his escape was still parked where it had been the last time he visited.

It was time to move forward with his plan.

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I hope everyone enjoyed the bonus chapters for RR launch week. My plan is to post 5 chapters next week if I can, but I thoroughly underestimated how much work it took to edit thirty chapters in one week. (15 for RR, 15 for Patreon). So I barely got any writing done this week. After that, I will be going back to my Mon-Wed-Fri schedule.