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The gloves were off.
"Picking up a contracted cargo." Whooex law said I didn't have to divulge any details of a private legal transaction to him.
The High Jerak went still as stone.
"What cargo?" he asked after a moment.
Well, crap. "I don't know. I didn't find it." Which was true. I wasn't sure if the kid and the people that died out there were our intended cargo or not.
"You lie." A dark flush traveled up the sides of the High Jerak's face. "Who contracted you to go there?"
"That is Human business."
"Who—"
"No." I shook my head, not caring if he recognized the action as a refusal to answer. "I want to invoke my right to legal representation."
"Who—" he reached for me, claws extended.
"Not touch patient!" It felt as if a wave of sound pushed through my flesh as the Zeek's warning thrummed deep and loud.
Apparently, the attendant's warning carried some meaningful force. The High Jerak drew back his hand and glared at me. "You are an illegal, undocumented presence on this world."
A chill of panic tore through me. Security declaring me "undocumented" put me in the ranks of homeless, jobless drifters that appeared and disappeared all over inhabited space. The High Jerak was telling me I, too, could disappear—possibly into his personal torture chamber—without anyone ever noticing.
It also told me the Endar did not exclusively control this world. If he arrested me, I went on his books, where some non-Endar might ask questions. Classifying me as undocumented made me invisible.
Fear twisted my stomach. I looked at the Zeek, hoping it would detect my distress and cut the interview short.
The High Jerak saved him the effort. "Turn over everything related to this thing and have it ready for transportation off-world at once," he snarled.
"Rehabilitation not complete," the Zeek objected.
"It can rehabilitate in its own filthy space. Your creed prohibits discussion of anything that transpired in this room if I, as one of the participants, forbid it. I forbid you to speak of this encounter with anyone. Prepare this creature for immediate removal. It leaves aboard the cruiser, Obega, or we will file charges against this facility for collaboration with an illegal species." He looked at me. "We could not prevent your arrival here, but we can make the stay as short and non-descript as possible."
The brown mound bowed slightly as the High Jerak swept out the door.
I searched my memory chips for a registry on the ship, Obega. Nothing came up.
The High Jerak's threat seemed to make some impact on the Zeek. It lumbered over and began to remove my monitor patches.
"What is the Obega?" I asked.
It paused, no doubt doing its own form of search.
"Tabi ship," it rumbled.
Tabi. I could work with that. "Thank you," I said. Next question. "Where am—"
The Zeek cut me short with a soft grunt. It gently closed a hand around my left forearm and rolled it to face upward. Between its brown fingers the new skin above my wrist showed pink and smooth, the blue veins delicate beneath the surface.
Blue veins I should not be seeing...
Realization slammed me. The silvery, tattoo-like symbols that normally etched my flesh were missing. The flexible surface of the wetware control grid that should sit beneath my skin was gone.
Rehabilitation not complete. The statement slammed me with its terrible significance.
My brain sent an automatic, panicked signal to the nerve endings in my wrist.
Nothing. All my interfaces with the Thief's Hand, all the hardware I needed to interact with nodes on EA stations and facilities, all the enhancements accumulated in the Marines, were gone.
How—? How could this happen? Without my wetware, I could not communicate with any system outside my body, including the ones on this world.
It was my greatest fear realized: I had truly joined the ranks of the scrubs.
My mind blanked with horror.
The pressure of Zeek fingers on my now-trembling wrist pulled me back to the present. I looked up into the three horizontal eyes in the great, pebbly face. With a comforting rumble, it spread its fingers to hold my forearm in its palm and lowered the piece of tech it was fiddling with earlier toward my skin.
Before the mechanism could touch my flesh the door chime sounded and two Endar wearing security-black burst into the room. They looked half-naked compared to the High Jerak's layers of leather, but they had a decent start on their own odd accumulation.
The Zeek released me and stepped away from the sling with startling swiftness as they moved toward me.
"No! Wait—"
One of the Endar pulled a short black rod out of his layers and raised it toward my temple.
The Zeek made a loud, urgent sound of protest.
The threat of getting my brain scrambled by some alien tech shut me up and cleared my head. I didn't have my wetware right now, but I was alive and able to fight another day.
They ordered me out of the med sling and into my shipskins. Then, with my backpack containing my awaysuit in my hand, marched me swiftly down several empty levels to the most elegant, and, again, empty, aircar lobby I had ever seen. The only thing that sullied the beauty of the aqua, green and silver décor was my leather-clad escort.
Separated from the watchful eyes of the Zeek attendant, I was at their mercy, so I kept my mouth shut when they shoved me into the sleek, black, unmarked transport module waiting at the curb. The High Jerak said I was going to this Obega. That did not guarantee I would get there. We had passed no other living on the way down to the aircar, so there were no witnesses to my presence here if I disappeared.
My escort did not enter the vehicle with me. Once the door closed, I spoke, trying to gain control of it. I ran through every language in my translation package. Nothing. The vehicle's windows remained opaque and the passenger interface refused to respond to my questions.
The transport accelerated, pushing me gently back into the seat, carrying me toward the Obega.
The silence gave me a moment to recover. I gave two quick blinks to activate my perivision and tried to establish a link with the world system again. The side screens flickered acknowledgment of the request but remained blank.
What the hell? My wetware had nothing to do with the hardware in my brain. I should be able to link to the world system the same as every other citizen of the Whooex Union.
I sent another request.
Nothing.
Now cold panic really tightened inside me. Were the chips inside my head damaged? Had the Xix—?
A request for information on Mandragala Station, on Idwal, on EA launch protocol, all pulled up reference accesses in my left perivision, and information scrolled from memory storage. I nearly cried. All my brainware was safe.
Yet, the feeds for this world remained mysteriously blank in my right perivision.
Maybe the aircar was shielded.
Endar bastards.
The solitude allowed me to focus and go over everything that had happened to me. First, I checked out my rejuvenated limb. I flexed my fingers, closed my hand. Punched the transport seat several times in frustration. It hurt. It felt normal. The skin of my arm was baby new, but the muscles and nerves felt adequately developed. I would have to work at regaining full strength, but, heck, I was a spacer: I didn't have a lot of strength to begin with. I rolled my left shoulder and my neck. Everything appeared to be in working order. I only had one massive problem with it: the Zeeks had not restored my wetware.
I should be happy to be alive. I should be grateful to be physically complete. The Ritto-ssa and the Xix had saved my life. And simultaneously destroyed it. Without the augmentations in my wetware, I joined the lowest rank of dockworkers. Capable of only performing manual tasks. I was basic gravity muscle—and I didn't have much muscle.
The aircar would reach the Tabi ship, Obega, soon. Odds on, it was a tramp spacer and my fare off-world included a commitment to work off my passage. With wetware, I could have bargained myself a better situation, started working my way back to the EA and reclaiming the things I had lost.
Tracking down a certain MoMo and Frairy...
Now, however, the Obega would probably occupy the rest of my short, miserable life.
At least it took me away from the High Jerak Seok and a small step toward recovering my partner and my ship—which I was no longer capable of co-captaining.
EA Space Fleet would not be happy with me over the loss of my wetware. It wasn't that Human technology was so advanced we had to fear exposing our secrets. Hell, the EA was so far behind everyone else their trash was our treasure. The problem centered around our habit of taking that trash and re-engineering it to do new things its creators had not intended it to do. That re-purposing made some members of the Union uneasy with us.
I didn't know if the military had enhanced my wetware, but I did know I could never afford a refit without the Corp paying for it, and they didn't like me that much. Even if I could reclaim my original rig from the Xix, I couldn't afford the reinstall.
At least I had the tech buried in my brain, including my language chips and translator. Without them, I would be dead meat for certain.
I turned my thoughts outward to Saura. The Hand had never signaled me it was under direct attack. Had the Ritto-ssa located it, docked so innocuously on the upper hangar, and pulled my partner out? Had they brought her here, too?
Maybe—my heart gave a twist of hope—maybe, somehow, she'd gotten the Hand out. Folded before the ghost found her. Maybe she was searching for me.
Maybe. But if I didn't make the right choices here, it wouldn't matter. The first thing I had to do was get back into EA-friendly space.
No, it wasn't: the words blazed like meter-high letters in my head.
I press my body deeper into the seat, my heartbeat rising with realization. The kid! She was on the shuttle that had brought all this down on us. She must know something about what had caused it. With her to corroborate my story, I had a chance of getting an investigation. I could get help recovering Saura and the Hand. Demand compensation for the loss of my wetware or even get it back...
In my mind, I saw the kid happily waving as she bound away from my med unit and disappeared beneath the blue sky. She was on this world.
I had to find her.
The Ritto-ssa ship had brought us to a spaceport on this world. Logic said they would take me to the nearest medical facility, so the nearest port was the place to begin my search. The High Jerak said he was putting me on a Tabi ship off this world. It most likely sat in that same port.
He was sending me exactly where I needed to be.
I felt bad for the Xix facility, getting an accusation of collaboration with Humans filed against it, but I was not going to be on the Obega.
I was not leaving this world yet.