Companionship - beyond flesh

Escape

Most of your augmentations are offline, but even in this weakened state you can see an opportunity. Temper has taken control of the orr monster, and you know that now is the time to act. It’s now or never.

Escape is your objective. But it’s not as simple as calling a drop-ship and racing to the extraction point; this is all up to you. An impossible task for a primate, you’re going to need your full capabilities online. Thinking is hard without augmentations, you feel the pressure of time pressing down.  Fearing that this reprieve in her attention is not going to last for long, you must move fast. 

Sprinting on the way to your apartments you force yourself to think about what you’ll need to do to enable your internal systems.  Your heart is racing, and you feel the blood pounding in your head; you can’t concentrate, and the technical details are a blur but you know that a hard reboot will do it. There’s an external interface in your study; you should be able to softwire to your private maintenance thread and stream the command from there. That is if she’ll let you. If you believed in God, you’d pray that her full attention was focused on torturing the autopilot. “There’s only one way to find out”, you whisper to yourself as you drop into your auger control seat and fumble with the additional security lock that you installed. After valuable minutes, you work the codes out of your memory and trigger the manual external interface. There’s no need to do anything fancy other than throw the command: reboot now.

You know at this point two things could happen. One: Your head fills with unbearable pain as she tells you, in her own way, that your escape was never going to happen; or instead, you experience a dizzy sensation and brief blackout, followed by cool awareness, access and power. 

Information wells in your mind like a tide rising in fast motion and the minute details of your surroundings and situation crash into your awareness like a giant wave breaking on the rocks. YOU MOVE! 

Directed thought is not a requirement now. Your mind floats, and you let it carry your body like a machine to your next destination. You’re a little surprised when you find yourself making a detour to the infirmary, but the reasoning of the action is logical, if not risky. A human might call it greed to jeopardise your escape in order to retrieve a globe of gass, but the whole point of being here, at this outpost, was to further your greater objectives. The horns that you carry on your head represent three-k of the most rare element (orr), the value of also controlling another one-k of the second most rare element (gass) is immeasurable. The two used in tandem could generate any number of new possibilities. 

You stop and wave open the doors to the infirmary. As your body takes the most efficient route to the globe of orr sitting on a bench at the far side of the room, you glance briefly at the pathetic figure of Churchman laying asleep on the table. He means nothing to you now. You reach out to grab the small globe and attach to your belt in one fluid motion. You’re back out the door in six seconds.

The battle debris in the next section of the outpost would slow down a human, but you hardly notice the junk. You maneuver at great speed down the halls, navigating the levels by leaping over rails rather than via the express ramps. The dock is not far now. 

The next stage of the escape is going take time you can’t avoid. Navigating out of the hanger and acclimatising in the ante-chamber in preparation for entry into the heavy metal gas environment outside of the station will take time. As you run the last stretch of corridor to the hanger, you connect to station SIS to implement your defenses.

You’re relieved to find that she hasn’t removed your access shortcuts  to the station’s core systems.  With these interfaces still in place, it’s a small task for you to begin sabotage of the outpost’s shielding. Once she becomes aware of your escape and decides to take action, it would be easy for her to recapture you. So your plan is to cause physical damage to shielding infrastructure that will require her attention and allow your escape. You doubt your sabotage would engage her full attention so calculate a high probability of failure. But, gunning for success, you dismiss the odds.

You note that there’s also the possibility that she doesn’t address the sabotage in time. Then the outpost will be destroyed in less than twenty-five minutes. Hopefully by then you’ll be on a ship outside, so this eventuality is none of your concern.

In the hanger, the deck lights of Companionship are beaming just as the idiot Jones left them all those weeks ago. The courier ship is the closest vessel capable of interstellar travel, so you decide to make her the vehicle of your escape.

Before you can take control of the ship, you’ll need to interface to Companionship’s SIS. You spin a new thread as you speed to the ship’s external hatch. Two hundred milliseconds later, the ship is yours, so you don’t even have to slow down as the entry to the ship twists open to let you in. By the time you land in the cockpit, field generators are online, and the ship is moving. 

Your interface with the outpost’s SIS is still active.  You issue the command to open the bay doors to the antechamber and then schedule the external doors to open in exactly ten minutes. Anything less than fifteen minutes in the ante-chamber would be a risk, but by taking out safety margins you calculate the lesser time is acceptable.

The last thing you can do while connected to the outpost’s SIS is set a series of encrypted command traps to slow down any attempt she may make to override your program. These measures will give you five extra seconds max -- any additional time will help.

The bay doors close and the antechamber begins its hostile transformation. For the next nine minutes and thirty seconds you're trapped. You pull out of the outpost’s SIS and remove any external threads that could connect to your systems.  

Monitoring the external temperature, you feel relief as the interface relays five thousand degrees centigrade. At this temperature, she'll no longer be able to interface with your nervous system via your horns. Her grip on you is clear. You reach up and stroke the valuable metal attachments on your head and realise that they have become part of you as if they are battle scars, healed and wearable with pride. Later you’ll have the time to work out how to integrate your systems with the amazing properties of the orr. You can’t help but grin.

Three minutes and thirty-two seconds before the external doors open and you commence your final sprint to freedom. You spend this time searching for any hidden threads that she could use to interface the ship’s SIS.

The antechamber environment gains parity with the heavy metal gas outside, and you wipe sweat from your forehead, a disgusting human condition that you will need to treat when you have time in three … two … one …

The external doors do not open. The temperature in the antechamber begins to fall. She’s back and trying prevent your escape. But she’s too late, the ball is in your court.

Your command hits Companionship’s forward field thrusters instantly, and the ship crashes through the external doors as if they were thin foil. You are free.

====

As Companionship navigates the violent currents of the heavy metal gas cloud, you take the time to replenish energy reserves and recalibrate your systems. The Orr Refinery is on your sensors and looking ok, so you assume she managed to fix your attempted sabotage. In a way, you're relieved; after all, there was a lot of orr still at the outpost, and it would be a shame if it were lost. You’ll be back.

One day later and the ship glides beyond the firewall into open space. 

You shift your attention to the next leg of the escape: the journey back to the Solar System. 

It's fair to say that, in your augmented state, there's not much that could take you by surprise, but what happens next puts a lump in your throat.

You’re fully integrated into SIS, so the communication request hits your internal systems directly. The data pax identifies the owner of the message. Stunned, you accept.

The distinctive male voice greets you like only he could, “Tyr Rigel you mardy old bitch. Get your bony ass out here. We need to talk. Pronto!”