Trust Me

by Alcuin Fromm

Table of Contents parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Part 4

Lemm reached a different access stairway on the far end of the shuttle bay, gave a quick glance back to make sure Boothe could not see him through all the bustling people, and descended the stairs back into the Huntress.

He passed a few frantic stragglers on the stairs, too concerned with escaping to be bothered that Lemm was walking away from the shuttle bay. He darted down the empty corridors and back to his small cabin. Almost everyone would soon be evacuated off the ship, he thought, but not all. Lemm had decided to bet his life on it.

He entered his room, picked up his earpiece, and pulled off the panel covering the access tunnel. Climbing up onto the ledge, he flattened himself onto his belly, then reached back in to the room to haul up the panel. After a moment of adjustment, he managed to reattach the metal plate more or less securely. He wriggled his way down the ledge to where Nickel was hooked up to the computer circuits.

“Run a diagnostic on the core, Nicky.”

“Yes, sir.”

What should have been a momentary pause stretched into a protracted silence. Lemm’s heart began to race. Had he been mistaken? Had Father been mistaken? Finally, Nickel responded.

“I am sorry, sir, but all the ship’s functions have been blocked by an extremely advanced encryption wall that seems to have a source exterior to the ship’s main computer. It seems akin to what we are doing ourselves. It must have been installed at some point in the night. I cannot access anything without betraying our infiltration.”

Lemm exhaled in relief. “I knew it! It’s a fake, it’s a fake! There’s no core breach and there never was. He’s trying to get everyone off the ship so he can take it over, and he’s doing a damn good job of it.”

“Who, sir?”

Lemm paused. The reality of calling Boothe’s bluff began to set in. A mutiny on such a large ship could not be accomplished by one man alone. Who else was involved? What did they intend?

“I don’t know, Nicky. We’re going to have to find out. Can you patch into the long-range Comm system?”

“No, sir,” said Nickel after a pause. “The long-range communication system is behind that newly installed encryption wall. Furthermore, any attempt to access it would make our presence immediately known.”

“Short range?”

“The outgoing short-range communication system is entirely disabled. The Huntress can only receive, not send.”

“Clever bastard. All right. Here’s our task. We need to infiltrate into the deepest, most discreet sub-systems on this ship to bypass and evade their control. Most likely they have very detectable, visible programs running because they’re not expecting anyone to be poking around. We have to circumvent those programs without being detected and gain access to whatever we can. Anything. If we can flush the toilet in a cabin on Deck Twelve, let’s be able to do it. You understand?”

“I believe so, sir.”

Lemm and Nickel spent the next two hours in a systematic probing of the ship’s lower functions. The mutineers were almost as adept at hacking as Lemm himself, but he and Nickel were able to sneak their way into a range of secondary and non-essential operations, including the ship’s manifest and internal intercom system.

“Here is the Mess Room... and the Assembly Hall... and the bridge...” said Nickel.

As Nickel cycled through the rooms, Lemm heard a pop on his earpiece after each switch, followed by no other sound than the low hum of the ship’s underlying engine vibrations.

“And the brig...”

Suddenly, Lemm’s earpiece filled with boisterous conversation.

“Stop here,” he said, and listened carefully to a barrage of voices.

“All ran terrified—”

“Make contact with the Committee—”

“Vall Station—”

“And the Welder is here—”

Lemm could not keep straight the cacophony of simultaneous discussions.

“Nick, what does the Huntress’s manifest say about the brig?”

“Just a moment,” said Nickel, then continued after a pause. “The Huntress is currently holding seven prisoners in her brig, all of whom are to be transferred to Vall Station for either permanent incarceration or execution.”

The voices became quieter and slowly faded away.

“They’re moving,” said Lemm. “Run through the rooms again. And give me a list of those prisoners.”

Lemm listened intently to the audio pick-up from each room as Nickel recited the names.

“Nihrn Star’ek, arrested on Ireth and convicted of theft, espionage, four counts of murder, and criminal conspiracy with the Revolution. Binton Torstill, arrested on Ireth and convicted of seventeen counts of murder, destruction of Imperial property, and criminal conspiracy with the Revolution. Mar Neer-Frist, arrested on Ireth and convicted of sabotage, forged documentation, industrial hacking, and criminal conspiracy with the Revolution...”

Nickel completed the list and Lemm simply shook his head. Every prisoner was a violent Revolutionary. The Huntress, with traitorous assistance from within her own crew, was in the hands of the enemy. Fear seized Lemm. In his rush to act, he had run headlong down a dead-end, stowing himself alone on a hijacked ship, with no means of communication, no control of the vessel, and no way to escape.

Lemm’s morbid thoughts were suddenly interrupted by the sound of voices. For a moment, he panicked, thinking his hiding spot had been discovered, until he realized that the voices were coming from his earpiece. He heard a pop and they were gone.

“Stop. Go back one room, Nick. Where was that?”

The voices returned, becoming another indistinguishable mixture of overlapping conversations.

“The Assembly Hall, sir.”

The talking gradually died down to a murmur and then ceased altogether. Apprehension grew in the pit of Lemm’s stomach and was not at all lessened when the crowd in the Assembly Hall suddenly burst into cheers, applause, and hooting. A solitary voice rose above the din to quiet the celebration. Lemm immediately recognized Boothe.

“All right, all right, yes, thank you, thank you. Gentlemen, the Huntress is ours!”

The cheering began again and took minutes to calm. Among the words and bits of phrases that Lemm could make out, he noticed one expression repeated more often than the others, Im ran nethrilli, which, despite his only mediocre knowledge of the Irethian language, Lemm understood as “forward the revolution.” Finally, the crowd seemed to finish venting its jubilation and Boothe began speaking again.

“My fellow freedom fighters, this day and the days ahead of us will go down in history as mighty blows against the tyrannical Empire. You seven, valiant Revolutionaries have been liberated from your wrongful bondage, not merely to turn injustice to justice, but to continue the struggle. Let us not, therefore, celebrate just yet.

“The brilliant plan devised by the Irethian Revolutionary Committee, despite the unexpected arrival of the Storna, has succeeded thus far. You are freed, the crew of the Huntress and the crew of the Storna have been expelled from our ship, and we are on course to Vall Station.

“Upon arrival, Vall will see us as just a friendly Imperial vessel arriving with an unfortunate short-range communication malfunction. As soon as we are within range, we shall unleash the Empire’s own blood-stained weapons against her, crush Vall, and open up an unhindered flight path for the Revolutionary fleet, amassing as we speak around Brinyia Three!”

The cheers and shouts exploded a third time. Lemm could only listen in dismay.

“Gentlemen,” said Boothe, quieting the boisterous men, “gentlemen, we must get to work. Neer-Frist has some engineering knowledge. He will go to the engineering deck. Everyone else must come with me to the bridge where we have centralized the majority of the ship’s functions. The battle is not over yet. Im ran nethrilli!”

There was a final roar of approval before the men left the Assembly Hall. Lemm listened to the emptied room as he imagined the mutineers swarming through the ship like ants. He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples, which did not help relieve his throbbing head. “This is bad, Nicky.”

“I concur, sir. Mutiny and treachery are among the least respectable human traits.”

“But not the least common. All right. Let’s just think here. What can we do? Do we have access to anything that we can actually use?”

Lemm and Nickel poked and prodded their way around all the ship’s major functions, but the mutineers’ infiltration proved to be too thorough and too well defended to offer any points of entry. All the while, Lemm monitored the conversation from the bridge which intensified his growing sense of urgency. The Huntress was racing towards Vall Station.

Suddenly, an idea came to him. “Nick, I think we’re going about this wrong. We’re trying to get past or around their programming. What if we go into it? What if we hack into their hack?”

“It is an interesting idea, sir. I shall begin examining what gains could be made.”

They spent another interminable quarter-hour pouring over the encryption code that barred their access. Lemm realized that he could make tiny alterations to the mutineers’ work without being discovered, but he could not control or eliminate any essential elements.

One particular passage of dense, complicated programming code kept sticking in Lemm’s mind. He examined and reexamined it on his personal Comm. Overwhelmed by a growing sense of discouragement and fear, he shut his eyes to quiet his mind for a moment. Something about the code was triggering a thought, but he could not quite pin it down.

“No, no,” said an angry voice over the earpiece. “Reverse the polarization first, then redirect the energy flow. After that—”

The idea that had been plaguing Lemm suddenly coalesced in his mind. “Reversal,” he said quietly.

“I beg your pardon?” said Nickel.

“Reversal of the override program. What got everyone off the ship? What did the crew think was happening?”

“The crew believed there was a plasma core breach.”

“Why? The computer said so. The alarms went off. Lights started flashing. But no one could walk into the core and examine visually what was going on. We were all just trusting the information given from the ship. But all that information was false. What if we reverse the process? What if we incite an actual catastrophe in the core and use the already present hack from the Revolutionaries to deliver false information about it, saying there is no catastrophe?”

“To what end, sir?”

Lemm paused and felt the weight of his scheme settle on his heart. “To destroy the ship.”

* * *

Proceed to Part 5...

Copyright © 2023 by Alcuin Fromm