“Whatever he’s doing it seems thought out.” Aurora told me with a shrug. I had no idea what she was talking about but I followed her gaze. A small part of Vines was doing something to a panel with some tools. H squared came wandering past. The rest of Vines was covering him down to his waist, all that could be seen was his legs.
“Looks like an authorised fix.” I said, in place of a shrug.
H squared had gotten to the panel by then. The vines closed up the panel, then wrapped around his legs until nothing of him is visible. Then man and plant wandered off again. Then Jessica came out, rubbing her eyes. “I must have been really tired. Feels like I’ve been out for ages”
“You had a long night,” Aurora gave her a welcoming smile, going over to the panel Vines was at and taking a closer look at what was done.
“Should we be worried about that viney armour H squared in covered in? A possible cross-mutation between him and Viney?” I asked Aurora.
She ignored me. “Fascinating, it seems like Hue figured out how to replicate the alien tech using our own.” She reached into her pocket and passed Jessica the flash drive. “Here’s everything I got from Scorsby’s computer, as promised you can do with it what you like.”
Jessica looked a shade pale as she nodded. “Thank you” she said before leaving for her lab.
“Shouldn’t we tell her the plan?” I reminded Aurora. She smacked her forehead. We all followed Jessica to her lab.
She was already watching the footage, looked relieved mostly, a little horrified when she saw the death of her attacker, but then she shook her head and closed the file.
“Self defense, clear cut, if you want to delete it, that’s your call, but you’re the only one with a copy in existence, so you’re free from the blackmail.” Aurora told her.
“I am ? Oh, thank you so, so much.”
Aurora gave her a fond smile. “Promise made promise kept, you’re one of us, and we look out for our own.”
“You can be sure I’ll look out for all of you the same way you have for me” Jessica smiled self-consciously
“Course is set, we should probably fill Jessica in on our plan?” Estella nodded to me. “If you’d like to do the honors?”
“Plan?” Jessica looked at everyone, finally stopping at me.
“Nah, I will let Aurora do it. It’s her plan.”
“Basically that same corporation Star Analytics that’s trying to weaponize these plants is the same one that wants to use your talent for nefarious ends, so we’re blowing up the asteroid with the plants and making them think you died in the explosion.” Aurora announced.
Her eyes opened wide. “Wow, I guess that’s a pretty final solution.” She looked crestfallen. “It’s too bad. I mean, I know they’re dangerous, but I want so much to understand the plant life there. It’s so… unique”
I coughed. “There’s also a second part to this. We…. umm… will be staying out of touch with civilisation after that.”
“Completely?I mean, I’m not really going to miss being under Scorsby’s thumb, but there are a lot of planets in this universe”
“Well, initially at least. That corporation is… we don’t know how big it is.”
“Right, we plan to head out to the fringe of colonized space, keep off their radar for a few months until they forget about us.” Aurora said.
“Understandable, if they are as powerful as you say. But, um, what about Scorsby? Couldn’t they just hire him to track you down?”
“That’s… A fair point.” Aurora looked over at me and Estella, “You were with him last night, did he seem okay with working against us?”
“Well, he wouldn’t have warned us if he was willing to work with them.” I pointed out.
“He acted like he felt kind of guilty when he mentioned it too.” Estella added.
“Then it’s doubtful he’ll try to track us down, and with him believing you’re dead he won’t be very motivated to find you either.” Aurora reasoned.
“I guess that would have solved the blackmail problem just as well anyway. I was just worried. You know, because of his talent-“
“Which is? He never told us.” I had tried to worm it out of him a few times but he outmanoeuvred me.
“Being able to track anyone, anywhere, given something that was in their recent possession. I didn’t realize he kept it a secret. He only told me to let me know it was pointless to run. I never thought of faking my own death before”
I whistled. “That’s like a human hound.”
“That complicates things.” Aurora said.
“Yeah, we tell him you died and he tries to find you to verify it, he’s going to realize pretty quick you’re not space dust.”
“But he needs something in their recent possession, how recent?” Aurora started one of her conjectures. “If he doesn’t have anything of yours you’ve owned recently we’re fine.”
“I guess we’ll know if he really is working for Star Analytics, if they hand over that letter you sent them. As for me, he has access to my apartment. I’m not sure how recent things need to be. Could be I’ve been away long enough by now…”
“He’d have to find us himself, it’s not as if he could point to a star and let Analytics follow his finger,” Aurora said with a shrug. “If he mysteriously turns up somewhere out on the rim we’ll know he’s chosen to work against us, and then-” She sighed. “We’ll take care of the situation.”
“You’re over thinking this,” Estella said gently. “If the corporation thinks she’s dead, and their asteroid is dust they’re not going to both paying Scorsby to track her down or verify it, there’s a giant cloud of debris in the sky proving we kept our word, hiring him is probably the last thing on their minds compared to avoiding whatever scythe will be coming down on the local leaders from the corporate heads back in the core worlds.”
“Oh, that’s a good point. I guess I’m always looking at the worst possible situation.” Jessica admitted.
“They’ll want someone to answer for their failures, and they’ll be too busy trying not to be the scapegoat to bother seeing if Jess is still breathing.”
Aurora nodded, “Fair enough, for now let’s blow the asteroid, that loss alone will cause enough of an upset they probably won’t have approval to follow any leads on Jess they might hear anyway.”
“I still can’t help but be sad about losing the opportunity to study the plant life there, but I can see that desperate times call for desperate measures.” Jessica said.
“We will be heading out to the big wide world, plenty of more plant life to study out there.” I reminded her.
“We also plan to bring along a bunch of samples, and reseed them elsewhere in the galaxy,” Aurora continued. “We’re not so much exterminating the plants as relocating them and eliminating evidence of that fact.”
She nodded. “Ok. Well, what can I do to help?”
“Estella was working on a herbicide to kill the plants, maybe you could work with her to find some kind of reliable repellent? Ideally we want to keep from becoming plant food during our underground foray.” Aurora suggested.
“Also we need to rig the sled up with lights, we can use that to travel once we’re in the underground chamber, that parking lot is huge, it’ll speed our journey to find the core of the asteroid and um turn it on?” Estella added.
“I can definitely help with the repellant.”
Aurora rubbed her hands together in anticipation, “I’ve been thinking about that actually, if it is some kind of alien space station it may well be mobile, and armed, if we can gain control of it we could vaporize a near by asteroid with its weapons, and they fly off with it to the fringe, and put it in orbit around some other star.”
“Might be handy to have an alien star base we can revisit as desired, full of spare ship parts and whatever other secrets.” Aurora concluded.
“That would be so cool!” Guppy chimed in.
“Now that’s a sweet idea, and I confess I’m not sure thrilled about the whole running for our lives back to the ship before the place blows up part of the plan.” Estella said.
Aurora nodded in agreement. “Ditto, depending on how touchy the alien systems are that count down might be a handful of minutes, or less, so… Yeah, taking control of it is my first option.”
“An alien starbase might also have a self destruct system in place, to keep people from hijacking it too, so ya know, we might be doing the whole run for our lives bit anyway.” Estella pointed out with a grin.
“That’s assuming it’s operational still, or mobile, it may be so defunct the most I can do is make the power plant fart and vaporize the asteroid, no way of telling until we’re in its guts to see for ourselves.” Aurora replied.
“Actually I think both of you have forgotten that giant living down there.” I reminded them.
“Right up until you reminded me, yep.” Aurora admitted with a nod.
Estella nodded with a sheepish grin. “We should stick a really big gun on the sled for Sam to use.”
Aurora smiled broadly, “Good thinking, what kind of gun do you want Sam? Machine gun? Plasma cannon? Micro torpedo launcher? Whatever you want I can throw something together, probably.”
“Make sure H squared does the main part on that. We don’t want that to fall apart after one shot. Something with rapid fire and strong power, I think. I will think about it somewhat and let you know.” I told her, knowing her special ability.
Aurora chuckled. “Yeah, that’d be somewhat sub optimal. I’ll work with him and Vines, while Estella and Jess work on the repellent.” She paused. “Actually I could use your help with Hue, I’d like to question him about the upgrades Vines has been making with the ship, and how they seem to have um.. Bonded? You seem to understand him better than the rest of us so I’d love it if you could help me translate his um.. Responses?” She shrugged uncertainly.
“Sure.” I said, although it beats me how she had come to that conclusion.
“Right,” Estella nodded to Jessica, “Let’s go make some repellent, unless you want to smash that footage? Or um store it somewhere first?”
“Umm, I’ll figure that out later. Once all this other stuff is over with. I’m ready to spend some real time in the lab.” She actually smiled at the prospect, I guess it’s like me with shooting.
“I’m glad we could help you get out from under Scorsby’s thumb, no one should be in a position like that.” Estella said.
Jessia looked really tired for a moment. “I hated being controlled. It was like being in a prison where I couldn’t see the walls.”
“It’s all over now.” I told her.
She took a deep breath and then let it out slowly. “Yes, I still can’t quite believe it.”
“If you ever want to talk about it, or just want some companionship, you know where my quarters are.” Aurora gave her a warm smile..
“I appreciate that. But for now, I want to get working on this. Knowing someone else is out there wanting to hurt me… I’ll feel better knowing that’s behind me as well.”
“Agreed,” Aurora glances over at me, “Ready to go find Hue?”
I nodded and walked off towards the Engineering section. He was there. Mostly I could only see Vines reaching into various compartments with its vines but knowing their symbiotic state now, but I assumed he was in there somewhere.
“H squared, can you stop what you are doing for a minute? We need to ask you some questions about the upgrades you’ve been doing.”
“We’re not upset,” Aurora clarified, “Just curious.”
They turned around, stepped out and separated. H squared mumbled something and tried to smile, in an awkward way.
“Sorry I didn’t catch that, what sort of upgrades have you been making?” Aurora asked him.
He walked over to a workstation and turned a dial. There was an increase in the general vibration of the ship for a few moments and then nothing.
H squared looked mighty proud of himself after the demonstration. It beat me why that was but I didn’t say anything.
“You made a vibrator out of our ship?” Aurora blinked in confusion.
He frowned and shook his head. “Faster.”
“Oh nice!” She smiled in approval, “How much faster? Lots?”
“Three times.”
“Very nice, and how did you figure all this out?”
He pointed at Vines, “Knows things.”
“The plant… knows things?” Aurora gave Sam a skeptical expression.
I shrugged. “It was living under in that junkyard.”
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