Theseus

I sat with a towel draped over me on the medical bed once more, but this time I hadn’t been under for long enough for my senses to have gone haywire, and I just sat there watching Joel and Mouse stand over Shaw with rifles pointed at him on the floor. It had taken about a half hour for Mouse to cut his way through the door’s locking mechanism. It dawned on me in that moment that my sense of shame about people seeing me in the nude had all but disappeared in my time with Theseus, if I ever had such a thing to begin with.

Shaw didn’t know much. He knew the name Arthausen, and he knew that it was a Foundation project, but he was evidently keen to get information from me as much as I was from him. We’d already figured that Foundation was involved in some way, but Shaw was able to confirm that it was something that they were involved in directly, and that wasn’t nothing. I knew now for sure that I was the product of some kind of military project. It didn’t make me happy, but it was information.

It was official, I was a weapon.

“How far did he send us back?” Aisling asked me patiently, clearly ready to forgive me if it was going to throw us off schedule.

I smirked toward Shaw “Never broke orbit yet. We barely lost any time. I must need more practice.”

Aisling smiled back “You can be a real ass sometimes, Meryll. Useful skill for people like us. Keep at it.” She pulled out her pistol and pointed it toward Shaw in a quick flourish “As for you, I’m not going to give you another chance to sneak around my ship. I should execute you right here.” The room went silent again, all eyes on Aisling, including Shaw with a grimace.

Then she put it away again with an exhausted sigh “But now I need to replace two bulkhead doors in the middle of my ship, so the money’s more useful to me. No less than three people on guard duty around him at all times, all armed. Escort this fucker to a DIFFERENT cell, and stay in there with him. I’ll make a shift schedule. Doc, take a rest. You and Meryll did a great job there.” Doc smiled at the compliment and looked toward me with a nod. I suppose I had to admit, I kinda did save his life there, in my own weird way.

Aisling moved toward the door, motioning Joel and Mouse to follow. Joel shoved Shaw with an angry and impatient “Get up.” And walked him out.

“Meryll, back in the tank.” Aisling ordered “I know your sleep got interrupted, but Foundation’s probably gone by now and we need to unload this guy before he pulls something else. You gonna be okay without Mouse?”

“Yeah, he’s kept things in top shape.” I nodded “And I’m not complaining. I could use a nice long dip in the tank after all of this. I’ll try to keep his implant suppressed, but I don’t know if I can keep doing that forever.”

She nodded to me “You’re doing a great job, Meryll. I mean it. Keep it up.” She flashed a thumbs up and walked through the hall to join her fellow jailors.

“Well… that was a ride.” I told Doc as I stood up again, shedding the towel since drying off was a lost cause now.

“You’re telling me. At least you got to go to sleep voluntarily before all this.” Doc rubbed the back of his head, feeling a sore spot where he’d been struck by Shaw.

“How long were you awake, by the way?” I asked, eagerly approaching the core module.

“Around the time he started ranting about his tiny magic tool.” Doc muttered.

“Oh good, you missed the part where he tried to get in my pants.” I groaned.

“Yeah, his tiny magic tool, I just said that.” He somehow said with a straight face. I let out a loud laugh as I dropped down into the pool of lubricant.

—

‘Captain.’ I pinged Aisling once I was back in the core module and settled in ‘What are we going to do about him knowing about me now?’ I asked.

She looked down at her tablet from inside the awkward silence of Shaw’s cell and tapped out her response ‘I’m thinking we cut out his tongue, I’m getting real tired of it.’

“You should really get a decorator in here. Maybe you could make this a crafts room or something.” Shaw interrupted Aisling’s train of thought.

She immediately typed out ‘There has to be a more painful way than that though,’ while Joel smacked him in the back of the head with the butt of his gun again.

‘I’ll leave you to figure it out then, I guess. Good luck.’ I posted before moving to the exterior of the ship. It wouldn’t take long to prepare for landing, but I sent out a long range ping to take a look at what traffic was like around Luna now.

Opening my eyes so I wouldn’t be overwhelmed by the stream of data pouring in, I had to start thinking to myself, parsing the thoughts that had been interrupted by Shaw’s trickery. What had I been a part of? I knew I had another bad dream, but I couldn’t recall any of the details anymore. Just how deeply was I involved with Foundation that the condition I’d supposedly had my whole life was also the name of a secret military project that this information broker had only just glimpsed the name of and nothing more? What were they hiding? Would I ever know, or should I just have been thankful that I’d escaped whatever it was?

Closing my eyes, I took a look around the system and froze. Something had changed since my last long range scan. The Dreadnought had started to move to Mars, which was already strange enough until I noticed that Luna itself had four noteworthy warships in geosynchronous orbit over the colony. This was far more than a patrol.

Immediately, I pinged Aisling ‘Captain, I need you at navigation. Now.’

‘Can’t. I’m not going to leave this asshole be. Why, is someone hailing us?’ she asked back.

‘I’m not fucking around Aisling, there is a BLOCKADE over the colony!’

“The fuck?” I heard her say out loud. She stormed out of the cell without another word and slammed the door shut behind her, causing Joel, Mouse, and Shaw each to exchange looks of confusion.

I was already changing my orbit so that I wouldn’t be going anywhere near the colony anymore while Aisling walked down the hall and stepped into the heart. She told Doc “Change of plan, we got a situation. You watch that fucker too while I deal with this.”

“What about Meryll?” he asked, catching hold of a pistol thrown into his lap.

“Meryll’s fine, just… cover this while I figure out what’s happening, alright?” she said as she rushed up the stairs. I sent out a more focused ping toward Luna and it quickly became apparent, they were all large foundation frigates.

“Talk to me Meryll, what the fuck is happening now?” Aisling called impatiently as she stepped onto the bridge, dropping down into her chair and looking at the panels displaying the data I’d just gathered.

“Four frigates, right over Luna colony. This isn’t a patrol, Aisling, this almost looks like an invasion or a strike force. Thought you said they’d be gone by now.”

“Four?” She cried out in astonishment and began looking over the data herself “Bloody hell… yeah, that’s some force they showed up in.” She muttered. “Someone on the colony must have had a colossal fuckup if the corpos care this much about it. Shit.” She groaned, leaning back in her chair “Isn’t enough shit going wrong around here? Keep us away from them and get ready to break orbit. I’ll try to get a relay to the Skulls, see if they can’t come pick up their man. Too many of us are on their radar for us to risk grounding ourselves there now, and I’m not holding onto this pile of shit until the heat dies down either.”

She immediately started to type away at the terminal “Thanks for letting me know, but holy shit, I’m tempted to just airlock this fucker and go lay low on Earth. Or at least renegotiate the contract cause of all this trouble. This has been a shitshow.”

She began typing away at what I could only describe as a furious pace while I started to slow us down. Seemed we wouldn’t be landing soon after all. “Should I inform the crew?” I asked.

“On their terminals. Be sure to preface the fact that Shaw doesn’t hear any of this. If he thinks there’s anything wrong, he’s gonna try something stupid again.” She sighed “Gimme some space for a bit, I need to think.”

I nodded and began drafting the announcement to the crew. It didn’t take long, it’s not like there was a lot to say, even if the gravity of the situation was pretty heavy. I realized, however, that I would have to tell one of the crew directly. Ray didn’t have a personal terminal.

Looking down into her room, I saw that she was in the mess, an irritated expression on her face as she worked on cleaning some of the dishes. “Hey Ray.” I sent through the intercom to make sure I didn’t surprise her with a bunch of information.

“Meryll.” She nodded solemnly. She looked more irate than usual, but I think everyone was at least a little bit pissed off after the morning’s events “How long until we land? I don’t have a good feeling about our guest continuing to live on our ship at this point. It would probably have been a better call to just shoot him. He’s too dangerous.”

“About that.” I started, trying to add a bit of appropriate tone to my voice, but it was lost. it was almost like I was trying to fake emotion, even though it was just me trying to portray it through a different medium than I was used to “This can’t get back to Shaw, but we can’t land on Luna right now.”

Ray almost slammed the dishes she was cleaning down into the sink again and turned to look at the intercom “And why is that?”

“Foundation blockade. In force.” I explained “We’re going to try to get the skulls to meet us out here. I don’t really know what’s going to happen if we can’t.”

“Huh… wonder what’s got them riled up out to here.” She muttered angrily “I’ll gut that bastard myself if they keep us hanging.”

I watched her go back to scrubbing hard at the dishes for a moment, unsure what had her so worked up. Yeah, Shaw was irritating, and we’d just had a close call on the ship, but it was over now. He couldn’t overpower three of us watching him. “Are you alright?” I tried to ask gently.

She stopped again, her voice softening slightly “What time is it, Meryll? Earth time.”

I was used to operating on Saturn’s clock, just out of force of habit, so I had to do a few calculations in my head, aided by the ship before I answered “Around 20:00? Is that how you say it?”

She put the dish down and took a deep breath “Sorry, I lost track of time. I need to take my medicine. Thanks for the heads up about our situation.” She made a half-hearted wave toward the intercom and then began walking toward her quarters. I hadn’t been aware that the medication Mammons required would affect their mood. But I supposed that if I had some kind of physical deficiency like that that I had to keep up with, it would probably make me a little irate not to have it too.