Stolen Flyght – Chapter 5

I’m surprised by Carlos’s room when I arrive. He’s set up several workstations, and datapads occupy the available surfaces. Gloria and Simon glance up from datapads when we enter the room. Oh, right. Great. These people who don’t like me are now a part of the team. Hooray.

“Captain!” Carlos jumps up from his seat and hurries towards me. “I have excellent news. Or it may be troubling news if you look at it another way.” He tilts his head and thinks about it for a second. “Yeah, maybe.”

“What, Carlos?”

“He has resurrected me from the dead!” Ai’s voice comes out of a datapad’s speaker, making me jump back and clutch my heart.

“Oh, my God. You nearly killed me, Ai.” I wait for my breathing to slow down. Simon smiles at me, and Gloria looks like she’s suppressing a sarcastic comment.

“Sorry, Captain. Once again, I have little control over my corporeal existence and have ended up in a datapad. I told Carlos to put me back into a sexbot, but he insists on keeping me here.”

“Sexbot?” Gloria’s eyebrows inch skyward.

I ignore her. “Ai, need I remind you that you’ve never actually been in a sexbot?”

“But I was meant to be in a sexbot.” She purrs, and it’s enough to make Carlos blush. “I would take care of each and every one of you like I was meant to do. Even Carlos.”

“Jesus,” he mutters under his breath. Clearing his throat, he says, “Okay now! Moving on.”

Simon laughs into his fist, and Gloria covers her mouth with her hand.

“So, this iteration of Ai is the one I backed up before leaving Sonoma. She doesn’t have first-hand knowledge of what we went through in the hijacking, but she has viewed the videos.” I’m about to interrupt him, but he holds up his hand to stop me. “Yes, I have all the archived footage from the Amagi up to when the military slaved the ship. My backup systems are” — he kisses the tips of his right fingers — “the best in the business.”

“I have to say, Captain, I’m proud of the way you handled Tomu,” Ai butts in. “You were very brave.”

“Thank you, Ai. It didn’t feel very brave. It was more stupid and terrifying than anything else.”

Gloria clears her throat. “You can say that again.” My smile dies a swift and painful death. “What you did was reckless. It could have gotten your whole crew killed and landed you all in a military prison.”

“Thankfully, we’re not in prison, and we did the best we could, under the circumstances.”

She points right at me. “That’s no excuse. You are a liability. I’ve been going over all the data, and you will not be getting involved. Now, you’re going to sit this one out because there’s no way I’m getting my team involved in one of your half-baked schemes.”

“Gloria.” Simon’s voice carries a hefty warning, but Gloria is too fired up to care.

“No. Don’t you dare try to check me. Remember what happened on Rio the last time we let some amateur run the show? Michael is dead now because I didn’t say ‘no’ enough. That’s on me.” She turns around and glares at me. “Never again.”

Okay, this woman has a history that’s causing her to act like a raging bitch. It’s not just me. It’s ‘amateurs,’ according to her.

“I have spent weeks going over the specs of this base, committing everything to memory.”

I pull back in surprise. Weeks? She catches my confusion and plows on.

“Yes, weeks. We were prepared to go in without your help.” She crosses her arms, shutting me out.

Simon puts out a hand. “Yes, but the mission had a strong chance of failing because we would have had to force our way in.”

“As if this idiot will do any better?” She gestures to me.

Carlos looks between Gloria and me, and his gaze is wary. He wasn’t privy to our conversation at Athens Industries when Gloria first came at me.

“I don’t like the way you talk to me,” I say, lifting my chin.

“I don’t give a shit what you like.”

“Gloria, that’s enough,” Simon snaps.

I hold up my hands and wait for her heaving chest and red face to calm down.

“Look, Gloria…” She’s already annoyed just hearing her name come out of my mouth, so I keep going. “I understand. Really. I don’t want to take control of your mission. Quite honestly, I don’t want to do anything for this damned mission in the first place. I’m only here because I owe Renata Dellis.”

And she better back me up at the auction or I will burn down every planet in the Duo Systems, I swear it.

“I will follow your lead, and I’ll do my best to rein in my impulsivity. I have a job to do, and I will do it.”

If it’s the last thing I do.

“Your job will be to follow my orders whether you want to or not,” she says, poking herself in the chest.

Sure, I’ll follow orders… until I don’t want to anymore.

I keep my mouth shut.

“Um, Captain?”

“Yeah, Carlos. Sorry, I’m listening.” I turn to him, blocking out Gloria.

“No problem,” he says, bursting into a wide smile. “I’ve been going through all the intelligence that Mr. Garza has on the Neve station we’ll be infiltrating.”

Simon interrupts, “Please call me Simon.”

“And thanks to Simon, I have an idea of what we can do to get into the secure area once we’re on the planet and past security.”

I hold up my hands. “Back up a minute. How are we going to get on-planet and past security?”

He shrugs. “That’ll be up to you and Mr. Aravena. I’m going to falsify employee records and forge new identities for once you’re inside. Then Skylar and I will be in the data center outside the base, about half a kilometer away. Inside the base, though, security is tight. You can’t come in as a tourist or a contractor because they track everyone once they’re inside. I won’t be able to change your identity if you go through security. You’ll have to be smuggled in.”

Smuggled in. Great. I imagine being curled up in a crate of wine. Can I get drunk first?

“Okay. I guess I’ll figure that out once we’re on Sonoma.”

“We’re going to pick up Yan Martinez on our way to Neve. He’s the best person I know to help forge new identities. He’s, uh, broken into other military bases in the past. Don’t ask. It was mainly to retrieve stuff that had been taken from him.”

The military loves to steal things, it seems.

“Also, I just spoke to Ken, and his plans have changed too. He and his lawyers will be busy flooding the military court with lawsuits because I got this footage from the base’s security cameras.”

He sits down and brings up a video of a busy cargo bay. The space is vast and seems to stretch on forever with multiple ships docked and military personnel walking everywhere.

“Wait. Is that…?”

I lean in, and Carlos zooms in on one particular ship. “Yes. It’s the Amagi.”

I watch as someone rolls a crate down the open cargo bay door. They’re stealing my belongings… my crew’s belongings! I clench my fist in a fit of rage as it takes over my entire body.

I study the video feed while I fume. “Fucking pirates. They are a bunch of thieves! Did we expect it to be there? I thought they would take the Amagi to a shipyard or a base where they could offload the livestock. Not Neve.”

“Yes, well, the interesting part of this video is that this is not just any cargo bay. The Amagi is one of eight ships in here that have been commandeered by the military in the last year. I’ve combed through the records, and the military stole every single one of them out from under their owners.”

“What the fuck?”

“Exactly my thought, Captain. I’ve watched these videos on twenty-times speed, and they’ve been offloading extra equipment from these ships for the last few days.”

“Where are they taking everything?” I scan the screen again, but I can’t see where everything goes once it’s off the ship.

“A storage facility here.” Carlos pops up a map and shows me where all the Amagi’s contents are being stored. “It looks like they’ve been taking the valuable parts of the ship and leaving personal items alone.”

Okay, well, I suppose it’s good news our belongings didn’t go straight into an incinerator. Yet.

Gloria snaps her fingers. “Can we get this conversation back on track?”

“Right!” Carlos’s eyes widen. I know him well enough now to identify his annoyance. He’s already tired of Gloria.

“I asked him to analyze all the available video footage for the base, and he got stuck on this.” She sneers and waves towards the images of the Amagi being stripped for parts.

“Hey,” he barks, finally losing his shit. “The Amagi is my home, and I want it back. You don’t get to tell me how I feel about my home being stolen.”

“It wasn’t stolen; the military commandeered it.”

“There is literally no difference in those two phrases. None.”

Oh, snap. Carlos is not taking shit from Gloria, either.

Simon holds up his right hand. It appears he doesn’t speak or get involved in conversations unless everything is jumping off the rails.

“Listen. We’re sympathetic to your situation, which is why we’re even here, working together. Renata Dellis said your ship and your home estate are your top priority, and that you and your team are taking part in this mission as a favor,” he stresses, looking directly at Gloria. “So, let’s move on to the down and dirty part of this business arrangement. The whole point of using your connections is to distance Athens from this engagement. Ms. Dellis doesn’t want the military to know she’s on to them. I asked Carlos to brainstorm a way for your team to access the classified sections of the Neve base.”

“And what I came up with is… well, you’re not going to like it, Captain.”

“Of course, I’m not going to like it. Tell me, anyway.”

The pessimist in me is ready for the worst. Sulking Vivian stands in the wings, prepared to make a blanket fort and hide out the rest of the day.

Carlos switches his vidscreen to a zoomed-in screen capture, and a chill runs down my back. A man with short brown hair and a tall build and a woman with high cheekbones and her brunette hair in a ponytail stare straight ahead, their postures rigid. But that’s not what’s so strange about them. It’s that when Carlos expands the capture, they appear over and over, copies of them in several crowd shots.

“Androids,” I breathe out.

I’ve seen sexbots before, and the bots that drive autocabs or help with dangerous tasks at spaceports, but these are much more advanced. They look human, and if their appearance weren’t repeated like a stamp, then I would’ve thought they were human.

“Yep. Visitors to the base outside of common public areas are escorted by androids wherever they go. So not only are people tracked, but they’re also watched… intimately.” Carlos clears his throat. “These androids follow people into the toilets even. In classified sections, the androids are everywhere — following individuals, standing in corners and doorways. They not only monitor everyone but can stop individuals who don’t comply with orders.”

“Shit. Is this normal?” I turn my question to Simon and Gloria. “Like, does this happen at all military bases?”

“No,” Gloria says, folding her arms over her chest, “I’ve seen androids at other facilities, but none this advanced and not this many either.”

“Carlos…” My voice cracks with apprehension. “There’s no way we’re going to get past all these androids.” I wave at the screen filled with copies upon copies of the same faces. “We need to tell Ms. Dellis that this won’t work out.”

“Hold up, Captain.” Carlos’s grin turns manic. Uh oh. “We’re in luck.” He brings his hands together in prayer position and then looks up at the ceiling. “Oh, so much luck. These androids will actually solve our problem of getting into the classified areas. All we need is to hack just one to stick by the team and pretend it’s watching us. Then you’ll be able to go wherever you want. We may even be able to get it to defend the team or create a distraction if needed.”

Okay, sure. Yeah. That could be a decent plan, but…

“I’m confused, Carlos. Since when have you been able to hack androids? It’s never anything you’ve mentioned in the past.”

He tilts his head, his lips pulled up at the corners. “Wellllllll… I’m not really the person for the job, but I do know someone who is. Actually, you know him. I never met him.”

He pauses, and I raise my eyebrows.

“Someone who owes us. Big time.”

“Right,” I mutter under my breath. I glance sideways at Gloria and Simon, both waiting for the name of this person.

But I’m not even going to think his name or say it out loud. He was on the run, probably from the military or maybe even Athens. Maybe the very people in this room right now.

“Yeah, he owes me after all the shit he put me through. But this is not something I’ll ask Hera Lee for. We already owe her far too much. We should come up with another plan.”

“Captain,” Carlos protests.

“No. I’m serious. Find. Another. Way,” I grit out through clenched teeth.

“Yes, Captain. I’ll go on the search,” he says, chastened.

Let’s hope Carlos can find what he needs. Because if he can’t, this plan is dead in the water.