Chapter 1: The Upload

These corridors smell like a snake farm. Matt transmitted. He was in Crimson’s full-body suit. He had no thermal signature, and his scent was recycled as breathable air. He was glad he smelled good.

You don’t smell good. transmitted the biomechanoid starship, reading his thoughts.

Shut up Crimson, focus on the mission. snapped Matt on their private neural frequency.

But you were talking about snakes! Crimson replied defensively. The ship wanted to move in protest but it was trying to maintain an energy signature below the sensor strength of their Draconic targets.

They had come across a Vorchan fleet during their vacation, and Matt – being Matt, had decided to infiltrate the kilometre long command ship and download the contents of the data core. Ghost, Matt’s ever-present and completely invisible fighter craft, was on standby, avoiding a thermal uptake until his downloading skills were needed.

Matt hid behind a bulkhead as a large reptilian Vorchan lumbered past. It was green, and was wearing a belt around its legs with all sorts of tools attached. He found that funny. How did their paws use all those tools?

As the Vorchan passed, he continued onward, letting the neural interface amplify his hearing in case more were coming (Vorchans weren’t particularly quiet). He wasn’t completely sure how he would get into the chamber with the computer.

Standing outside it, he was about to call for Ghost when the door hissed open. He shot out of the way before the Vorchan noticed. Its ears perked up, and it smelled the air for a moment before moving out of the chambers. Matt swiftly snuck into the chamber.

Sleeping chambers… Matt realized. There were two Vorchans sprawled out on a large matt that took up a half of the room.

They will hear me appear. Ghost transmitted, having shadowed Matt to this area, completely invisible and inaudible.

I’ll do it. Matt carefully plugged a tiny umbilical into his neck, attaching the other half to a universal bus on the terminal. He shut off the audio and closed his eyes, seeing the files appear. His neural interface could hold it, so long as he compressed it…

Snort. One of the Vorchans moved, extending its wings. It grazed the Vorchan sleeping next to it.

“Hey!” she growled, keeping her eyes closed.

“Sorry…” muttered the drowsy Vorchan, retracting his wings and seeming to sigh in disappointment.

Matt, with Ghost’s help on the neural band, crawled his way through the cyberlocks and readied a depressurization cycle in case the Vorchans woke up again. They could survive in space, but he hoped the escaping air would pin them by the bulkhead long enough for him to try and escape. How the escaping air wouldn’t pin him was something he could figure out later. For now he continued searching the databanks.

There. Matt said, highlighting a node among millions of others. It held course data for the fleet. It was heavily encrypted, a transfer across the neural band would take a while. It would be faster if he used Ghost’s algorithms by proxy and did it himself.

He tried to stay statue still as he decrypted the data, keeping an eye on the sleeping Vorchans. One of them was green with blue stripes, the other was grey with pale round blotches.

One is a Terran offshoot. They are Vorchans that evolved in forested and terrestrial areas. The other is an Arctic offshoot. Arctics were Vorchans that grew up in—

The arctic? Matt asked.

And other colder regions… where grey would be useful as a defence mechanism…

The download completed. Could be useful in cities, too, and ships… Matt made his way to the door, which he had opened during his time in the system. He had also added his genetic makeup to the door locks so they would all open for him.

“What is that?” she hissed, staring at the new profile.

“What?” asked Noir, half-asleep.

“What kind of a guard are you, Noir?! Didn’t you notice that upload? That’s not Vorchan.” Rin continued, staring at the screen.

“I’m a wonderful, amazing, powerful, attractive guard.” Noir said, taking a few steps towards Rin, but veering away as she growled.

Rin continued reading the file, trying to decompress it enough to get to the base code inside. The make-up wasn’t Raumen, either. It was some sort of mix. Suddenly, the file disappeared. “It moved. Someone is in our computers!”

Noir walked over to the sensor terminal. The two of them were the only two Vorchans on the bridge. Rin had decided to do the night-shift herself, letting her kin sleep the night off. It wasn’t like anything would happen. Noir – of course, being Noir – had decided to follow her, flaunting his ‘guard’ status to full effect.

“I don’t see anything your Royal Highness Rinny-tsu.” Noir said, leaning up against the bulkhead shadows to blend his black body into the darkness.

“I’m not a Queen yet!” Rin said, “And stop calling me that! You know that annoys me! Why do you – “

“Sorry.” Noir said, curling up to go back to sleep. “Anyways. There’s nobody Rin.”

“Check!” Rin insisted.

“Fine.” Noir stretched again, pressing one of his massive scaly wings against the bulkhead to crack the tired joints, “where was the last upload?”

“There. Tier 9, section 7. Chamber 922.” Rin said.

“922?” Noir asked, his chrome-black bladed tail perking up. “Sure it wasn’t the three of them just rubbing up against the console to—“

“Have you been stealing sec-cam footage?” Rin asked, not amused.

“No…” Noir said, slinking off, tail limp. “I’ll be right back. Maybe they’re bored…” With that thought he upped his gait and rushed to the elevator.

Now that Matt had the data, all he had to do was give it to Ghost, but to do that he had to get to a large, unmonitored chamber. He had an uncanny sensation of being followed, but his neural interface kept telling him he was imagining it. Audio feeds were blank; all he was hearing were the vents.

He scanned the dark cargo hold, making sure he didn’t trip any sensors. There was nothing here –

The chamber doors slammed shut behind him, sealing. Did you do that? Ghost?

No.

Matt’s neural vision showed Ghost’s trace elements hovering above him. Do you see anything?

No. Ghost began to descend, slowly slipping out of beemspace but staying cloaked from the visual feed. He must be glowing hot from the energy exchange, but his heat-sinks had been designed to take at least one stealthy emergence.

Something struck him. The sound of the blast was deafening with the neural interface on full gain. Ghost started to fall. Matt leapt out of the way as the fifteen meter long fighter craft collapsed onto a set of containers, all the heat and stored koveran energy escaping into the sterile air and blinding Matt long enough for something to grab him.

Shit! Dragon! Matt tried to pull out his pistol, but the Vorchan had him pressed up against the bulkhead. It was pitch black, with dark grey eyes.

They’re not dragons Matt. They’re Vorchans. Are you ready? Crimson asked.

Yes! Go go!

Crimson was referring to a neural boost. A neural boost was never recommended, and injected a Captain with dangerous amounts of chemicals, while also altering the firing rates of literally every neuron in the brain. Reflexes went up, the speed of time went down. It had gotten Matt out of several bad situations, and this was definitely a bad situation.

As his world slowed, he pulled free of the Vorchan’s talons, feeling flesh rip in the process. There was no pain, the interface mitigated that while in combat mode, but he realized his left arm was virtually useless. He raised his pistol, only to have it get knocked out of his hand by the Vorchan’s tail. It was approaching him again, legs readying it for a lunge.

Matt readied a kick, and as the Vorchan lunged, he intercepted it with a powerful augmented roundhouse kick to the side of the snout. Bones cracked, they didn’t sound like Vorchan bones, but the Vorchan was out cold, its right horn broken in half.

“Ha!” cried Matt, collapsing against the nearest bulkhead. “I win!”

The Vorchan started to get up.

“No you don’t!” he grabbed the sharp horn, aimed for the Vorchan’s right eye, and—

“Stop!” yelled another Vorchan. It was standing by the door. All he could see were blue eyes, the rest of the creature silhouetted.

Matt stood there, frozen, broken horn in hand. Suddenly the Vorchan jumped clear as kinetic shells pummelled the area. Ghost was up and back with a vengeance.

“Let’s get out of here.” Matt said, running for his fighter. He tripped as he tried to put pressure on his left leg, but Ghost grabbed him with a gravimetric lens, lifting him up and dropping him in the cockpit.

 

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