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It’s midnight on April 8, 2397. Waldemar and Audrey are trying to sleep when
his doorbell rings with a level two urgency pulse. He sits up, and tells the
AI to open the door, and send whoever it is into their bedroom. The secret
service agent comes in while Waldemar is rubbing the sand out of his face to
inform him that they encountered four intruders. “Intruders where?”
“The gym locker room.”
Waldemar yawns, annoyed. “You woke me up for that? If they’re not
authorized, put ‘em in the brig, and leave me out of it. If they are, then
leave ‘em alone.”
“It’s not that, sir. They’re not authorized anywhere. They’re...” The agent
hesitates.
“Just say it.”
“They’re Team Matic. We don’t know how they got on the ship in the first
place.”
That wakes Waldemar up all the way. He stands and steps into his integrated
multipurpose suit. “I want this whole ship on lockdown. Block teleportation.
I don’t just mean switch off the relays. Suppress all teleportation
everywhere. I should not even be able to teleport, you understand? We
can’t let them go anywhere. Where are they now?’
The agent nods at his subordinate to complete the order. “They’re in a
private brig. Do you want to speak with them personally?”
“Yes,” Waldemar answers. “But you stay here, protect my wife. Audrey, you
can’t go anywhere today. I know you had that art show with Sable, but it’s
off the table.”
“I understand,” Audrey agrees.
The Captain leaves his room, and assigns five more men to it. He walks down
the corridors manually, and takes the lift down to the private brig. It
wasn’t in the original design. This used to be a game room for children. Now
he uses it to interrogate prisoners without being pestered by the Hock
Watcher, or anyone else. Only his secret police and secret service agents
know of it.
There they are. It’s Mateo, Leona, Ramses, and one of the twin girls.
Where’s the other one, and also Olimpia? He smiles, pleased with his catch.
This is a big get for him. They’re a huge deal in the galaxy, past and
present. Word is they were there when the idea of the Extremus mission was
first being devised, and may have had a hand in proposing a few key
concepts. Their faces are impossible to read. They don’t look nervous or
upset. In their shoes, he would be angry. No, he would be absolutely livid.
The truth is, he has respect for these people. They’re renegades. They have
no authority whatsoever, but that doesn’t stop them from going wherever they
want, and fucking shit up. He can’t have it on his ship, of course. His
people were right to bring them here. Famous or not, they’re stowaways, so
they go in the brig. Extremus has no laws allowing for exile or deportation,
so it’s not like he has any choice. If they didn’t want to be trapped here,
they should have stayed home. No one forced them to come here.
Leona stands up. “You must be the Captain. So am I. Leona Matic.” She lifts
her hand, but makes no attempt to stick it through the bars. “Let’s pretend
to shake hands.”
Interesting tactic. She recognizes his power, but also his prudence. He
would never make physical contact, so this is a reasonable approximating
gesture. He obliges, holding his own hand out, and shaking the air at the
same time she does. “Captain Waldemar of Extremus Transgalactic Hero Ship,
Eighth of Eleven.”
“They each had one of these around their wrists,” one of his newer officers
says. He’s holding a wristband of foreign design. It’s white, and less
flexible than the ones they use here. And it could be the most dangerous
thing he’s ever seen.
Waldemar is instantly furious. “Are you serious? We don’t know what kind of
proximity power they have over those things. Get the hell out of here with
it. Get out! Get out! Take it to evidence!”
The young man runs out in terrible fear.
Waldemar looks at one of his more seasoned officers. “Follow him up there,
and then kill him. I can’t have such profound incompetence on my team.”
“Belay that order, soldier,” Leona demands.
It’s surprising, but what’s even more surprising is that the officer
actually does stop moving. “What the hell was that? You don’t listen to her,
you listen to me. Go do what I said.”
“Stay here!” Leona insisted.
“Am I on crazy pills? Why is he listening to you?” Waldemar questions
Leona wraps her fingers around the bars, totally unfazed by the deterrence
burning. “Because you, sir, are fleeting. You are the big fish in the small
pond. I am the one who dug and filled the pond, and he knows it. He needs to
be in your graces to live on this ship on this day, but he needs to be in
mine if he wants to live anywhere else.”
“He doesn’t need to live anywhere else,” Waldemar reasons. “This is
it for him.”
“Are you sure about that?” Leona poses. “Can you see the future? When we
show up, changes are made, and he is scared to death...just as you are.
Matt.”
Mateo Matic pushes off of the back wall, and bashes his whole body against
the cell door. It breaks open. He stumbles over the twisted metal, but
doesn’t fall down.
“Shoot him,” Waldemar orders.
The nearest officer still doesn’t budge, but the other two guards fire their
weapons at Mateo. The bullets don’t break skin, so they stop. It looks like
they hurt a little bit, but aren’t capable of doing serious damage, so he
doesn’t ask for round two.
Leona goes on, “we are not here to change things. We’re only passing
through. All you have to do is let us keep moving along. No one else will
know we were here.”
He is losing the upper hand here, which he cannot abide. Time to take
control. “Okay. I’ll make you a deal. I’ll let all four of you go right now,
but after you leave, I’m killing everyone who was made aware of your
arrival, even if they never saw you with their own two eyes. Are you
prepared to live with that guilt?”
She doesn’t say anything.
Waldemar chuckles and nods. “Ah, you’re realizing that your influence only
extends as long as you’re actually here. Once you leave, I don’t have to do
anything in particular, even if I agreed to it.” He switches his gaze to
Mateo. “Now get back in your cage, dog.”
“Don’t kill anyone,” Leona practically begs. “Just teach them to do better.
It’s much easier than constantly having to replace people, and breeds a
higher level of trust.”
“I know it will only be a few days for you,” Waldemar begins, “but based on
your outburst and rapid escalation, I’m guessing whatever you’re dealing
with his quite time-sensitive. So how about I leave you here for a few
decades, and we’ll see what we see. Okay? Great.” He walks out of the
holding area.
“Sir, I want to apologize. I wasn’t following her orders, I was just
temporarily confused. She must be a witch. You know they have powers in
their biology.”
Waldemar smiles. “It’s okay officer. I’m not going to kill you. I’m not
going to kill the one with the wristband either. It was only a showing of
strength.”
“Okay. Thank you, sir. It will never happen again.”
“Of course not.” Waldemar stops smiling. “Strip ‘im.”
The other guards disarm him, and start pulling off his armor and outer
layers. They leave him inside the holding area, and close the second stage
security gate. “Whatever your name is, you’re done. I won’t kill you, but
this is where you’ll die. The only prisoners we have in here are supermen
who only exist one day out of the year. If we don’t return for another 365
days, they will not have even come close to starving to death. But you
will.” He walks out of the private brig, along with his true loyalists.
“Seal it up. Pour concrete if you have to. No one in or out.”
“Wait!” he can hear the disgraced officer screaming. “Give me another
chance! I’ll do whatever your want! I’ll kill the idiot! Please!”
No, this is something Waldemar is just going to do himself. That way he
knows it will get done. He goes up to the evidence room, but doesn’t find
the guy. He doesn’t find the wristbands either, but that might not be so
surprising. The organization in there is utterly atrocious. Who does he have
to blame for that failure in competence? He’ll deal with them later.
The real problem is the missing people. For the next week, he sends his men
to tear the ship apart, but the wristband dumbass is nowhere to be found.
It’s a ship, there’s nowhere to go. Or rather, there shouldn’t be.
Wondering how far this conspiracy runs, he marches back down to the private
brig to visit the officer he left in there early, expecting to find him
weak, but still alive. He too is gone. No signs of forced entry.
Teleportation has still been entirely suppressed, even for the exceptions,
like himself and the people he trusts most. He orders a thorough
investigation, but wonders if the investigators can be trusted. Can he trust
anyone at all? Is trying to run this ship with any semblance of patience and
compassion worth all the uncertainty, and the medicine he has to take for
the headaches?
It’s like one of those old Earthan crime shows that Silveon likes to watch.
All the security footage has been expertly scrubbed or doctored, but there
is one small omission. In the reflection of an airlock window, there is one
clear enough still, showing the dipshit walking next to someone who appears
to be helping him evade capture. Waldemar can’t believe his eyes. He has
known her since childhood, and she would betray him like this? There must be
a good reason.
“There is,” Audrey confirms. “He didn’t deserve to die for one mistake. So I
saved him. I would do it again.”
“And the other officer?” Waldemar presses. The one I left in the private
brig? Did you break him out too?”
“No comment,” Audrey replies stoically. She doesn’t sound or look
remorseful. Granted, he has trouble reading people’s emotions, but it really
looks like she doesn’t regret a single thing.
He can’t kill her. This is his wife. It’s his goddamn wife! But he can’t let
her run free either. As scandalous as it is, he has to do the right thing,
and treat her as he would any other criminal. “Put her in the brig.’
“For how long, sir?” his agent asks.
“Indefinitely.”
