Caught in a Lie

[Eboksba]

The station slowed down and stopped when it reached its destination. A large expanse of black and a few violet clouds where all that was visible in the Kepler system. The lone trade lane snaked its way through the sector, and the coms station was quiet. The station looked deserted, not surprising, a lot of strange things floated about in Kepler. A trader for the Independent Mining Guild turned and saw a brief glance at the ship passing through a break in the clouds, only to vanish upon closer look.

The lone station blew through the cloud with a tired, almost wheezy glide. New state of the art ion repulse engines were strapped onto the back of the station. However, much of the power needed to run the engines were being used charging the makeshift hyper drive engine. It hadn't worked the last time, and he honestly didn't expect it to work this time either.

Back on the bridge, Ian was sitting in his favorite chair. He pulled up a data pad and opened up the small glass holder and inserted the key for the ignition key. The blue button started to glow and he double checked his readings on the screen. Kusarian script pulled up the screen very fast and his eyes rocketed back and forth reading the characters. He looked up and scooted his chair closer to the controls. He took one last look through the station's bridge windows, then hit the button to close the windows. There wouldn't be anything to see, and there was a chance that a stray particle could blow the glass out. He closed his eyes and hit the blue button. A huge, roaring burst of heat blew out of the air vents, and the station's engines drained to a quarter. The remaining power would be used to keep the station from disintegrating as it attempted to enter hyperspace. There was a more correct term for it, but Ian was already quite tired.

The gush of air suddenly went cold and he peeked his eyes open. The readouts the screen wasn't making any sense. He opened the windows and saw that the station hadn't moved an inch. Sighing in frustration, he moved the power back to the engines and the reserve of energy used to full other non important things. A alarm blared red and he turned back to the dashboard. The release of energy into the 'hyper drive' engine had blown out of a chute that wasn't intended, blowing out a gob of hull around the side. He watched on his camera was filled with a view of thousands of nanites swarming over the hull and filling it with base materials needed to repair the hole in the side of the station. When the hull was finished, the alarm turned off, giving the bridge an eerie quiet empty sound of various beeping and other mechanical sounds.

Ian signed, scratched his nose, then got up off his chair to go get something to eat. They had purchased some Synth Paste, but Ian refused to eat it. Not after hearing stories from that old AFA member that had come aboard the ship, near death to be made into another artificial intelligence by him. After searching his mind and sifting through pieces of his memory to see if he was a good fit, they had turned to him to pronounce if he was a suitable person or not. How sad.....he thought. To go through humiliating poverty, painful backbreaking work at home, made his way through flight school, only to be shot down by a few reckless gaijin that had passed through the area. He didn't know much about the incident, not how he died. But seeing how vivid his emotions were, how painful his family lived....he announced that his mind was unsuitable for integration in an AI. Another type of fire died behind his eyes that day, one that had already burned out behind the farmer's eyes. In truth, he didn't want the man to live a painful and extended life when the afterlife beckoned.

Ian pulled out of his reminiscence and back to the present. He strode downstairs along the dull white walls and headed towards the cafeteria. There was a single machine there, offering various types of paste. Ian ignored it and walked over to the pantry, where he pulled out a box of cereal and dried milk. How odd, he wondered openly. The cereal idea had lasted ever since the coalition, and perhaps even before that.

While he was guessing in his head the approximate age of the cereal, the door opened again and two figures walked out of the edges of his sight. He turned and saw his two visitors enter the room. He had already given them instructions on how to find the cafeteria and other rooms used to house successful patients <which were few> amongst other things. The girl looked around at the empty room before opening conversation. Are all of the rooms here this empty? She frowned and sat down. Normally, most people would gawk at her. She was so outlandishly bizarrely different that most people just stared at her when she talked. The teenager didn't even move his head to talk as he poured his milk, now hydrated, into the bowl, a fact not missed on her. Not really, we don't really get out much. He sat down with the bowl on a Grey table and started munching on his nutrient enriched wheat thing. Not much plant material was brought with the colony ships, but wheat was one of them. Like it had in previous centuries, it sat as a staple for humanity. Not really enjoying the raw stringy thing he was eating, he asked another question in response. How are you two today? The old man finally brought his attention to the teenager. You have a lot to explain.

The teenager smiled and looked up. Yes I do. Where would you like to start?
Before the old man could answer, the teenager started speaking again. You would like to start with some breakfast. There's food in the pantry and in that vending machine. He pointed his spoon at one of the many tables there. He had argued that they could fit more equipment in there if they took part of this huge expansive cafeteria out. As ever, it was quiet and Grey looking, like the rest of the station.

The old man nodded, then walked over to the pantry. He opened the fridge and pulled out various foods, opening the boxes because he couldn't read Kusarian. The girl walked over and helped her father forage for food.

When the old man started opening the packages that were filled with bulk food, Ian stood up and walked over to the dish washer and set it down inside. A thin laser brushed the bowl and disintegrated any food particles on it, then he moved it over back into the dish rack. Using water was wasteful in space and rarely left it completely clean.

He moved towards the door and pulled out another lab coat in a small closet there. He turned around to see them watching his silent departure, so he said, I'll talk to you in a second, right now, I need to move the station as far away from here as possible right now. I'll answer any questions you may have in a while. Go explore, do something creative. Just don't get into anything that you don't need to be getting into. Red and brown colored doors are off limits. I can't even get into the brown colored doors. He finished buttoning up the lab coat and left the room.

The two watched him leave in equal silence. Then they turned to their food. The girl turned her face to the old man and started to speak to him, Do you know him? You mentioned his name yesterday.
The old man sat there for a couple of seconds with his daughter staring at him. He finished his bite then started to speak. Yes, he was a student of mine. Vanished before he could graduate. He was very good in bio-mechanics, an interest we both shared. I had no idea that he followed through with my work so much. He turned back to his food, chewing some rice with noodles. The girl sat awhile in thought, then turned to her own bowl. She looked around the room and saw a small, almost imperceivable bump in the wall, but then her eyes didn't miss much anymore. She motioned towards it and the old man slowly looked around until he saw it too. The camera stared unashamedly at the pair, then started to stare at the vending machine, making large machinelike whirring and clicking, looking like just another stupid camera, but the old man knew better. In the college he worked at, they had cameras that acted like normal stupid cameras that just looked at stuff and showed stuff in a monitor, and even then, nobody had those anymore. It was probably pretending to be a stupid camera. He turned back and spoke to her softly, I want you to be careful, Ian was an ambitious student that was working towards the very thing I accomplished. I don't know why he came here, but I bet its not good news. She nodded, then finished her bowl. They both stood up and walk towards the door. Before walking out, the young woman looked dead on at the camera, only to find it staring at her when it should have scanning other things. The camera jerked back up to its original posting and confirmed her suspicions that someone was watching them. She frowned again, then moved toward the door and stepped through.


Back on the bridge, Ian sat back in his chair and began the long arduous task of figuring out what went wrong. After reading some inconclusive readouts, he discovered that the engine hadn't turned off overnight and had overheated because it hadn't cooled down correctly. Typically, when the bridge computer saw this, it would spray a misted version of liquid nitrogen all over the engine, freezing everything solid. It cooled it down, and then some. Because there was no one left to hit the ok button on the screen on the bridge, it hadn't happened, and had over heated severely. Grumbling internally, he set the bridge to do a few things while he was gone. Then he took his water cup down to get washed.

Striding along the bleak walls, he reached the cafeteria. The dishes were already done. Not really paying attention, he walked towards the dish washer, only to trip on one of the chairs. He made a spectacular fall, and papers flew out of his shirt, the readouts. Mumbling insensibly to himself, he gathered himself and leaned on the ground to go pick up the cup. It wasn't there. Mumbling to himself, he got on his hands and knees and started to look in the ground. Instead of finding the cup, he found a small sea of nanites covering the floor. He got up off of his knees in a heartbeat, and jumped onto the table, only to realize that wasn't a table he was standing on, it was only more nanites in the shape of a table. It dissolved right before him, making him sink into the table and pirouette gracelessly onto floor. Hair and face now covered in nanites, he sputtered and coughed, getting small flakes of them out of his mouth and face. A few more seconds of struggling happened, and he got up angrily to his feet. The nanohive must have prematurely activated. Everything seemed to be going wrong today. He straightened angrily and strode into the door.

Or the fake door that he just walked into. The door dissolved into more nanites when he was right in front of it. Ian closed his eyes and calmed himself for a few seconds, then said quietly Please stop that.
There was a few empty seconds, then the nanites just fell off the walls, revealing the true dimensions of the room and showing the real door, which was several feet away from him. Without a word, he turned and headed out of the room, and the small sea of nanites followed him out into the hallway in a small wave that turned bright blue and looked like a little stream surrounded with little mountains and even a little village that followed him and settled right behind his feet. Ignoring them, he continued to walk into the door. The nanites eventually became bored and flowed into another hall.

The nanohive was perhaps one of Ian's greatest successes amidst a field of defeats. The nanohive was originally going to be the ultimate in espionage. Able to take on any form, imitate any particle of matter, it could condense into a pen, a paper, a table, a brick, or a brick house. Special on board devices allowed them to manipulate a variety of energies to aid them in their mission. They could disguise as cars, trees, houses, or even an entire town filled with houses. They could imitate the metal cord in a wire and allow electricity to pass through it better than any wire ever did. It could turn into a space ship, power itself by attaching to various objects and stealing the charges of the molecules they ran over. However, the nanohive, like so many other if Ian's creations, needed a living host who would allow him/her to be reduced into an AI that simply ran it self by using a wireless network of ridiculous complexity. An 'Auia'. Auia's were variants on the standard AI's, in and out of the fact that they are more like a computer and less like a person. Where as an AI would have to think about the action using the resources it had, an Auia seemed to be a cloud of instinct. It could understand basic emotions better than an AI ever did, but only had the ability to reason a little more than that of a pre-sirius dog.

But like everything here on the station had during his 'escape', it had grown a personality. Perhaps it was the fragments of a dead AI somewhere.

He walked towards the engine room, stopping to get a new cup and filled it with water along the way. Sipping contentedly, he eventually made it to his destination. The engine room was loaded with equipment. A burst of heat greeted him as the large clunky door slide open and moved aside. A dark orange glowing was seen on the far end of the corner of the room, an he stepped through. The door shut behind him and he stood patiently as the cleaning cycle sprayed a fine mist out of little misters on the top of the small enclosed space. A moment longer, then the door opened up to an incredibly large room loaded to the brim with a dazzling orange light. Shielding his eyes, he pulled out a set of goggles from his lab coat and stood on a small elevator. Tapping absentmindedly into the little pad that sat on a small pedestal, it whooshed down with a gust of air.

After a full minute, it reached the bottom and he stepped off the small rectangle pad. There were only several things that were visible in the room besides the ridiculously bright orange light being given off by the engines. A small computer with a pair of 'sights' pulled up and he replaced his glasses with the polarized 'sights'. He read the results, then typed in a few commands. The orange light immediately shut off, and power was cut to the entire station. He reset the switch and flipped a few levers. The cooling engine room suddenly became so cold that the air started to grow crystals up top.

Even though Ian had done this a few thousand times, each time gave him a slight feeling of panic. Ian was never bothered by the cold. With a very slight, long, skinny frame such as his, a typical person would have hated the cold. Ian, however, welcomed it. The temperature of his room was always much colder than everyone else's, and he almost never wore any warming material during the odd planetary visit on colder planets.

What Ian was worried about however, was that the room would soon reach close to below zero. Already he could see the smoke clouds forming above him, still 2 or 3 stories above the door he entered. He flew towards the elevator and jammed the button. It shot up and he rose.
The cold gust of air was only a story away when reached the door and sealed it behind him. He pulled out a timer and quickly hit the button. The seconds slowly ticked away until the window finally fogged up and crystals formed on the other side. He hit the stopwatch.

<The watch reads :47 seconds>

Ian smiles. I was 6 seconds faster than last time, he thought.

After he went through the cleaning process again, he began the long and somewhat boring walk back to the bridge.


Katrina was bored. There was no other word for it. Even though the excitement of the 'trip' was plenty for a while, there was absolutely nothing to do unless you liked to talk to moody robots. This whole place was like dad's office, she thought partially complaining. It was day two and the creeptacular teenage was still nowhere to be found staying in place long enough to ask questions. Not that she really particularly wanted to do that. Dad had warned her away from the kid, and dad was a pretty mellow guy. He wasn't strict with his words, or with his punishments, but followed a belief that learning through experience is the best teacher. Dad was full of them, old axioms that meant to sound wise but probably was just common sense all along.

She reached another door. It was a boring grey door. She walked inside. She took a big long sweep of the room and found nothing more than a little chair in the dead center of the room. She left the room.
On her right, another boring grey door showed up. She walked by it. The door was making very loud sounds that almost sounded like someone screaming, or old chalkboards breaking, or high pitched metal bending. Partially alarmed, the door didn't open when she got close. Slightly unsettled, she moved on. She reached another door. This one was a little red door, and a delicious smell permeated the room. Out of curiosity, she opened the door and walked inside. It was another room, not unlike a few of the other rooms she had seen. A lot of paper, vials, glass stuff, and computers. Nothing in the room gave away the smell. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. Her now highly sensitive nose twitched, and guided her towards a little cupboard where the smell was strongest. She opened It up. There was a candy bar. Smiling slightly, she picked it up and opened the wrapper. Inside was not a piece of chocolate, but instead a small mechanical thing with the smell emanating from it. Disappointment showed on her face, and she stuffed the thing in her pocket. She reached the door and started to walk outside, when abruptly the door slammed on her tail. A gasp of pain blew through her lips and she pulled against the stupid door. Not relenting, the door stayed shut. She pulled the edges of the door shut around her tail and heaved. The door creaked, then flew open. A small light went on at a little data pad. It had the word 'Maintenance' outlined. Grumbling to herself, she held her sore tail and thought back on how she got it. Then her mind wandered back to when dad had been so dreadfully depressed because of the Stark Accident

<<

It was 3 weeks after the Kyle Stark incident on the Cambridge Research Station, almost all funding for her fathers enhancement project had gone completely down the drain, without a major breakthrough the project might have had to be abandoned. Then dad would have to go back to being a boring old academy proctor for the college. Kat was walking down the hallway towards her father's lab where he had locked himself up. She rapped hard against the door.

Come on Pops! You cant just sit around sulking all day!

Little more than a small mumble emanated from the door.

Dad! Open the damn door!

The door flew open and Katrina found herself staring into her fathers angry, bloodshot eyes.

Kat! Don't you ever raise your voice at me or I'll..I.... He trailed off. The decrepit old man looked hard in his beautiful daughter's eyes, her long brown hair and large doe-like eyes gave her a childish innocent look. His hardened face soften and he almost collapsed against the door frame, head bowed with his hand rubbing his hair. I'm sorry Kat. I'm just a bit tired...

She gently moved him over to his chair and sat him down.

Dad, this stupid project is too hard on you, give it up. You can work somewhere else, maybe we'll move back to Liberty, too. She began to ask, almost pleading.

No, Kat, I've almost got it, if we can get this project done I may never have to worry about failing again, all I need is a test subject, but after that psycho, Stark, the Government wont give me so much as a rat to toy with, much less a living human. Kat, my girl, I don't think you have any idea just how big this is. He looked away, the tired greyness returned to his eyes.

Kat had an idea at that moment, it was stupid, reckless, and maybe fatal, but it may work.

Just how sure are you that this may work, the experiment I mean Kat asked with a hopeful light in her eye.

Ah, well almost positive, if I cou-

I'll do it! She almost yelled.

You'll do no such thing!! The professor yelled, outraged at the very notion.

Kat let out an exasperated sigh and trots off to her room. Later that night she laid in bed thinking the situation over.

She pulled her mind to the present and instead of finding her father's office, found a little brown door staring at her. Already irritated, she skipped the door. So many of them had slammed on her new-found tail that it was starting to ache.

Now totally bored out of her mind, she decided to go find her father and make sure he didn't do anything stupid. Strolling down the hallway, she opened up to the 'lobby' where there were chairs, windows, tall ceiling, along with other lobby like things. She wandered down some other hallways, before she had to concede to herself that she was lost. She heard a slight buzzing behind her and she whirled around.

At the end of the doorway that she just left, there was a small rotating robot that looks somewhat like a security camera with propellers. It watched her look at it, then lazily floated up the hallway until it reached the lobby. Deciding that now would be a good shot at getting the thing to stop following her, she sat down on one of the chairs angled away from the door.

About 20 seconds later, the whirling got louder and the camera shot out of the hallway, slowing to a stop in the center, bobbing up and down chaotically. It spun around and finally found Katrina, who was sitting in the chair, leg crossed. The camera strafed on her side, then inched closer. She turned away from it, then turned her head back.

It was right in her face, not even 4 inches way, with the lethal looking motor blades incredibly close to her head.

She twitched violently away from the camera and lost her balance on the chair and fell onto the ground. The camera followed her blunder off the chair and continued to stay there watching her while she tried to right her self. She was still gathering her things when Ian strode into the room, holding some smoking hot drink, blowing carefully, into the lobby.

Ian stopped and looked at the bizarre spectacle and stood there with a puzzled look on his face. Katrina blurted out, This camera has been following me around everywhere. Do you have anything to do with this? Ian opened his mouth and closed it. He looked at the camera, then walked over to it and pulled it out of the air. It made a big long beep in protest as he flipped it upside down and read the panel. The tag read maintenance bot.

Its probably just a service camera that got confused. It must have thought you were an intruder of some sort, our cameras and alarms are silent, although, you'll have to forgive them. Ever since I came back here, they seem to have developed personalities of their own. Sorry 'bout that. She got to her feet and Ian opened the back of the device and fiddled with something. It beeped loudly, twice, then stopped its chaotic whirling. Looking up, he decided to ask a different question, since she seemed a little raw. Whats that smell?
Huh? she arched a furry eyebrow. oh, this? She pulled out the candy bar object thing and held it out for him to see. The teenager frowned. Why do you have a COME?
A what?
A COME, Candy Olfactory Emulation Emitter?
Oh, I don't know, I just found it. Why would they need a stupid name for something like that?
The teenager returned to his blank face look. Internally, he started to sweat. If the girl had been looking around in his station, there was no end to what damage that might cause. He internally decided to turn off all of the important things before he continued with the hyperspace calculations.

The young woman looked at his blank face and responded with a question of her own.
Have you seen my father?
The teenager broke his blank look and adopted one of slight concentration. He turned up to look at her and replied, Nope, I thought he was with you.

The woman sighed. Alright. I'll keep looking I guess.
The teenager nodded, then wordlessly turned and started fiddling with the device while walking to another one of the unlabeled hallways. Grumbling to herself in slight frustration without getting anything in return for it, she turned down another hallway and started walking.


The old man wasn't sightseeing today. He was on a mission.
After having found the database with the station's map, he headed straight onto his student's R&D facility. If what the teenager said was true about his kidnapping, then the damage that might ensue could be incredibly dangerous. The kid demonstrated more than just being a little adept in the field.

Taking a very, very, very fast walk around to see where the kid was, he found him up in the bridge, fiddling away with the controls, humming contentedly to himself. He snuck out of the room, flew towards the end of the hall, and slowly made his way around the station until he found what he was looking for, the dark blue colored door on the exact opposite side of the station from the cafeteria.
...All the while, a small camera picked up the trail and began to follow.

He opened the door and found something incredibly different from the other rooms. Gurneys and materials were lain around the room, a massive podium in the center of the room held a small table, on it, straps made of Kevlar v7 were visible, gleaming in the faint light. The room was immaculate, quiet and , except for 3 things. There was a massive vial of something that was being held inside a machine connected to a computer monitor that displayed temperature and stabilization readouts, a giant sterilization device that was periodically making a quick sweep across the room, and something that caught his eye.

It was a giant syringe gun, about the size of half of a on-world tire. A glass canister gleamed as he stared at it with shock. A small air compressor was hooked onto the side. Unlike the manufactured appearance of everything else, this looked like it was constructed handmade. Little burn marks where welders had brushed over the corners showed up easily.

The old man's mind was immediately backed up away from it. But the device just stood there, sitting in the cabinet humbly waiting for its master. The old man stood there for a couple of seconds, before remembering what he was there for.

Apprehensive slightly, he pulled up a chair and dragged it over to the table over towards the business standard reports computer. It sat there for a second, then opened up a holographic image right behind him. He didn't notice it until he looked at the reflection of the screen. He flipped the seat around, grumbling about kids and their new technologies, and how stuff should stay on a screen, before the menu pulled up. It was white and had 5 buttons. Reports, Add new Report, Begin Procedure, Settings, Failed Projects.

He pulled up Failed Projects, another menu pulled down and several pages of choices appeared. He opened one at random.

I thought right again, but the stupid Bretonian suggested we go ahead with it. I hate it when my gut is right. The nanites failed to stay in their operation's parameters and wandered off in the bloodstream, attacking anything vaguely shaped like tumors. Subject's body torn apart. Suggested fix on line 3s.......
The report read on and on. He pulled up another one.

The device failed to cooperate with the body. Retina detachment and insane blood pressure killed the subject before the SToP could be administered. Computer modules stated that this operation would be well within operational limits of the body. Failure to work in tandem with device, suggested fix, Document 2810. -Hikotada

Now spooked, the old man read one more. This one was listed under Ian's name.

Dammit, The synapse dehabilitator essentially destroyed the subjects mind. The subject lost all higher thought functions and collapsed into mental instability. There is no suggested fix. Process remove from current experimentation until another finding has been uncovered.

The old man had read enough. It had confirmed his suspicions and proved even more. He got up and noticed the little camera starting at him in the corner. He waited until he realized that it wasn't moving, it was focused on him. Instantly adrenaline shot up into his body, and his old withered carcass jolted up from the chair and flying towards the door. Out of the corner of his eye, the syringe gun sat there quietly and he instead detoured and slammed his body into the glass. He grabbed the gun, which was very light despite it's appearance, and he walked off. The door slammed shut, and simply dissolved like sand onto paint. Before his eyes, the door he would have walked through simply was a wall.
The old man stood there for a few seconds, then brought up his make shift gun and pointed it in front of him. He listened quietly, assuring to himself that nothing was happening. He began beating himself up mentally. How could I be so stupid? This is just some elaborate plan to kill us. He knew that his daughter had become a jewel of possible knowledge mining from the other countries, that there were others who wanted his project destroyed before it could actually do anything. This wasn't the first time he was attempted to be assassinated. The first time was a horribly planned assassination, they tracked the guy down and hanged him after they found him. The second time was more professional, someone slipped into the air chutes, and tried to take his life by drizzling down poison from the ceiling, or so the security told him. It would have worked too, but a freak chance saved him. He had been sick with a fever, and he had opened the window to cool the room down. The breeze pushed the poison a few inches from his face onto his pillow, and the light rapping sound of the poison falling onto the pillow woke him up.

He blurred back into the hallway holding the syringe gun and ran until he found his daughter. He almost cried in relief as he stuttered to a stop, gasping beside her. A concerned look entered her face and she asked Is everything all right? He stood still as a few rasping gasps entered his mouth and out. A few seconds more of this, then he turned and told her what he discovered. Her eyes flew open and she helped him onto his feet. By this time, the camera had made up his mind over following his preprogrammed route or this new excitement that was brewing. It flew inside, buzzing contently, as it surveyed the room. There was nothing there. Disappointed, it turned down the side hall and looked down. It saw two people near the end, running as fast as they could. Bored, it flew on into their direction.


Ian was walking down the hallway, sipping his cup of water. He eventually wandered down into the bridge and checked up on a few things. He sat down in his brown chair and started to reread his calculations, then stopped and reset the warp sequence again. It was an untried technology, and it still did things with math that Ian didn't like. That was where he was when the door flew open. Cup frozen at his lips, eyes wide open, he saw his old professor holding his syringe gun aimed dead at Ian's face, daughter in tow. The old man blurted out, You've got a few things to explain. I can see that the security guards wanting to kill us was a complete lie now, you better speak up!

Ian internally groaned. This is the part he'd been dreading, he even assigned the nanites to watch the brown door, but apparently they didn't do that. What exactly do you want to know? he edged.
The old man wore a determined look on his face Why did you take us here? Ian simply responded I didn't lie when I said that the security guards were going to kill you. I took you away on my station so that later today or tomorrow I could get this hyperspace rifter to work and could take you where ever you want to stay put until things die down a bit. Satisfied he said the whole thing in one go, he took a sip of his water.

The old man pointed the syringe gun at his face. You better get us off of this station this instant, before I do something I will regret. The teenager looked at him dead in the eyes, then with a slight nonchalance, he waved his hand at it airily. That doesn't work. Not without a key any how. He pulled a little dog tag sized key from his pocket. You don't think I haven't had my fair share of people pull that one on me? Fat chance. The teenager finished off his bottle of water, then tapped a few things into the station next to him. If you really want off, the Spatial is in the hanger, it's easy to send a bot or two to fly it back to the base. Would that be alright? The words were barely out of his mouth before the old man yelled No bots, I don't trust you.
The teen shrugged. Just make sure you return it then somehow, it cost a lot of money. I'll open the hanger bay. Green door, just follow the lines. He tapped another thing in and a LED line lit up along the wall leading to outside the door.

The old man looked at the teen. Then he pointed the gun down. Why did you do it? The teen stopped typing. He slowly stood up. He was quiet for a bit, then said Your ship is downstairs. He turned and grabbed his water cup, then turned into another door opposite of the direction the green lights were. By this time the camera had finally stopped bustling and flew into the room, rotating erratically, until it stopped and stared at the two visitors as if it was all his fault. The old man and the young women stood staring at each other for a while. Warily, they backed up and ran the rest of the way to the hanger.


The camera followed as it watched the intruders enter the hanger. It followed them until it reached it's off route point and another camera took over. Angry at the intrusion, it had changed the LED ring around the camera to bright red to point out that fact to the intruders, but, as usual, they took no heed. They entered the ship and left the station. Still angry, it flew at top speed to Ian's office in the bridge to report it's findings. As soon as it entered the room, it turned and flew to his desk, then turned off, an open invitation for him to look at the security camera. When he didn't' respond, it turned on, scooted a little closer using it's propellers, then turned off again. Sighing, Ian took the camera and turned it off. He set it down onto the floor near his desk and walked over to the camera on the far side of the wall.

He watched the ship leave the hanger morosely. The ship grew smaller and smaller as it flew out of his site. He turned his view to the camera and the 'video' that it had to show him. The camera's screen blurred to life and he watched the footage of the camera following her entrance as she left the room. The camera skipped a few minutes of losing it's target, then found her again. It zoomed across the hallway and it zipped into the room, coming close to her face. The camera edged closer and it flicked her across the cheek, drawing a little blood. Ian stood up, more interested now, the camera still showing the scrolling image. He turned it off and found his prize, a small piece of hair found caught in the rotary blades. He smiled, then pulled out a small piece of clothe that he used to clean small spills from his coat pocket, then cleaned up the small dab of blood that was congealing on the propellers. He may have lost his ship, but he didn't lose everything. He put the clothe in this hand and folded it around the small dot of blood and went down stairs.

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