The Brutus Code

Controller: Status?

Sutton: No update. We’ve lost them.

Controller: Status?

Sutton: Still nothing. Search continues

Controller: Status?

Sutton: We have a lead. The last known location of his mother.

Controller: He’s asked for her help. Caution, this will be dangerous.

Sutton signed off the messaging app and called Tania Smith into her office. “Are there any further updates on that MOM?”

“None Admiral. The digital trail has run cold.” Tania stood waiting for the admiral’s next request.

“Organize a search and rescue mission to the system. They will need the help,” Sutton ordered. “And make it look routine.”

“Yes Admiral.” Tania turned crisply and left. She hoped that there would be someone left to rescue.

Almost two hours later, Alfred was completing the preparations that Tommy outlined. Outnumbered again, this time guns would be aimed at them. Tommy had another problem to face. He stood just outside the MOMA, Mobile Orbiting Medicine Administrator cabin, his mother’s quarters. The structure hung suspended in the middle of the OR structure, the third and core level. The perma-glass had been darkened. Upon asking, Tommy found the staff of MOM H-One never saw it clear. In fact all the staff’s interactions had been though his mother’s halo-projection of her on the humanoid avatars. Their patients never suffered, so the staff never thought twice about it.

Tommy took a deep breath and punched in the code he used since boarding the MOM. An access code that his father had given him before he disappeared, Tommy found that it often opened doors for him where he should not have access but needed access. This time the code did not work immediately. Tommy stood there for a moment. Instructions appeared on the touch pad, Hold Still. A scan of Tommy’s face followed. His mother was being very careful. Two humanoid avatars strode up behind Tommy on the catwalk to this level. They did not wear his mother’s projection.

As Tommy waited, he heard the hatch begin to grind. A slight vibration came through the floor beneath his feet. This hatch had not been opened for ages. As the hatch finally lumbered slowly open, Tommy faced a darkened chamber.

He stepped through the dark portal and a single set of eyes watched through the perma-glass floors two levels below. The chamber is open; we can finally get access, screamed through the watcher’s mind. The Reaper’s Judgment will soon awaken. The real Annie Judson was accessible.

Inside the MOMA’s quarters, Tommy’s eyes adjusted to the low light. He was surprised by what he saw. This looked less like a personal quarters than a full medical laboratory. Tommy counted only one humanoid avatar, but no less than five surgical avatars, similar to Alfred’s maintenance spiders. As a sphere, any or all sides could be the floors. Annie adjusted this inner chamber to one half gravity and oriented the gravity so the wall beneath Tommy’s feet was the floor. At least for the moment there was only one up and one down.

The light in the chamber came from the various medical instruments. In this light, Tommy saw a sphere of zero gravity occupied the center of the chamber. Inside rested a casket, like the one in which Agnes had been found. It contained an oxygen and nutrient rich fluid. The casket was on a mechanical gimbal, which oriented it so the occupant appeared standing in relation to Tommy. That occupant was his mother.

Her eyes remained closed. On her shaved head she wore a cap to interface with her nervous system. Tommy couldn’t see her back, but fine strands of interface cabling floated there and connected to the panel above her head. The casket glowed a soft blue color. Annie’s body had other tubes attached to a harness that anchored them. These tubes fed her and maintained her body. She looked drained. Not like a raisin, but less than healthy. Her skin no longer radiated the warm olive tone that Tommy remembered. It had faded as if her beautiful color had drained out of her. The muscles could no longer have lifted her even under the half gravity of the rest of her chamber.

“Hello son,” her soft voice sounded very near to Tommy’s ear, but came from throughout the chamber. “Won’t you sit?” Her image, still looking healthy, faded in. The image sat in a lounge area populated with comfortable sofas and a low table. This one area of the chamber displayed personal touches. Tommy walked over and sat with the image of his mother to his left and her body floating several feet away on his other side.

“I’m here. Say what you need to say,” Tommy stated curtly.

“Thomas, please don’t make this harder than necessary. Anger won’t help you understand, and I need you to listen,” Annie pleaded.

“I never knew you. You left too early. You are just a woman I’ve now met,” said Tommy calmly. “Go on. There is little time.”

Annie considered him through the perspective of her hologram. The face of her hologram glowed the healthy color and vitality that Tommy remembered. She looked more like the youthful mother of his childhood. Tommy spitefully wondered for just a moment if she locked herself away to avoid others seeing her age. He could not hold on to that selfish image of Annie. It did not match what he had seen of her work and the way she responded to her patients. Annie was a healer. And no matter what he felt she had done to him when she left, she certainly did not deserve a totally cold response from him. She didn’t deserve a grand and warm reunion either.

Elsewhere on the MOM in a dark Psych Ward cabin, the indicator light on several monitors went from green to red. Her eyes flashed open. The Angel Reaper smiled. Although she still did not have power to the environment suit that completed her scarred and chopped up body, she could move her one human arm. She turned her eyes up to where that arm was manacled to a wall. She firmly pressed her thumb to the middle of her palm. Then, starting at the shoulder where her other arm should be attached, her suit peeled away. Her mechanical appendages floated away carrying her fake torso to the waist, revealing a functioning life support mechanism beneath. She wiggled and pulled. As she did, she extracted several slender short metal appendages from a cavity of her human looking leg. They folded together in a tight bundle. Entwined in that bundle computer fiber optic cables that let her control the deactivated limbs. These hung onto what was left of her spinal column coated in silver titanium, which protruded from her torso. Microcircuits glowed and blinked from it.

Her metal appendages opened and peeled off the other leg of her suit, exposing even more metal appendages and cabling. With this new set, she reached to cut her bindings and pull off the rest of her suit. She now floated in the zero gravity of her chamber. Many would call her an abomination, with only her head, a single arm and breast remaining of her human body. Most of what remained of her humanity was heavily scarred. Machine parts and computer circuits had replaced the rest. She must have had a gyroscope in her chest cavity because she effortlessly flipped over and floated to an access panel on the side of her cell. She used her tool like metal limbs to open the panel and shut down the security in her cell. Replacing the panel, she pushed open the perma-glass partition and waited in the dark. A slight glow of her tattoo shown, the scythes framed by angels wings. On the blades the Latin phrase read: amantes sunt amentes- 
Lovers are lunatics.

Not long after she affected her freedom from her deactivated body, the door to her ‘padded’ room unlocked from the outside. She slipped through the opening and onto a waiting gurney. She secured herself under it, and she rode this way, unseen, out of the Psych Ward.

In the Gorilla’s ward, the other med unit’s walls darkened. His remained clear. He touched his finger to his ear where an undetected switch activated a hidden com unit in his skull. He subvocalized a response and left his cell. In the hall, he followed an orderly to the nearby empty On-Call room. There, he searched the lockers until he found a set of scrubs that fit. When he emerged again, a meal cart had been left in the hall while the staff fed the other pirates. When he opened the cart his hand lay on a tray. He grabbed some utensils for weapons and used the cart as cover to leave. He didn’t have far to go for his rendezvous.

The young pirate computer tech jumped when the perma-glass in her ward darkened around the other occupants. She heard a twerp in her earbud and activated the link.

“It’s time to move. Rendezvous in the Quarantine Ward ASAP. Don’t get caught!” a harsh female voice barked.

“But…” the computer tech said when she heard the ‘click’ of the connection being broken. She eased nervously out of her med unit to the door of her ward. It unlocked. She took a peek out the perma-glass window in the hatch to the corridor. She saw several of the MOM staff members distributing food to the other wards on the wing. One headed her way with trays. She quickly returned to her unit and waited.

“That’s strange,” said the orderly as he entered the ward. Those panels shouldn’t be dark. He brought the computer tech her tray and was surprised to discover that her unit was not locked. “You just stay right there.” He backed out of the ward keeping an eye on her.

Still scared, she shrugged and ran to a system touch panel in the wall by the door to the ward. There she punched in code. It didn’t take her long to access the controls to the other med units on her ward. She cleared the partitions first. When the other pirates saw her loose in the ward they all stood, anticipating that they would soon be free. Instead, she made sure that they were locked in but able to see what happened next. She darkened her own unit and walked back into it. When the orderly returned with help, the lights in the unit went black and everyone was thrown off when the gravity suddenly failed.

The orderlies bumped around the ward for several minutes until one of them managed to get to the touch panel and restored light and gravity. They found that all the pirates were present, but the med unit for the young female pirate was darkened and locked. They could not access or see her. A scan indicated that there was a moving heat signature inside the unit. It would take more than an hour to access that unit safely. In the confusion, the orderlies never noticed that one of their company calmly slipped out of the ward and now strolled down the hall.

If a hologram could look nervous, Annie’s certainly did that as she examined her fidgeting fingers lying in her lap. Her calm demeanor befitted a respected surgeon. She had been leader of this MOM for a long time. Her olive skin accented her large brown doe eyes depicted in her projected image. In sharp contrast to the clouded eyes and pale softness of her real body that floated in the vat across the cabin. What could she say in explanation? She never thought this moment would happen. She believed she would never meet her son in the vastness of the galaxy. Yet here was the son she deserted over twenty years before. How do you explain to a stranger what would force a mother to give up a young child? For Annie, it was to rescue her other children.

“I don’t know where to begin. And there is so little time,” she said in a quiet voice. The same voice that had calmed patients for years sounded hesitant and uncertain.

Tommy folded his arms across his chest and leaned further back into the sofa cushion. He had to see her as someone disconnected from his life if he was going to sit there and listen at all. He knew that he could not let his own sense of loss overwhelm him. There were other lives at stake.

“Well then, I suppose the beginning was just before you turned five,” she began. “You had a brother, David who was twenty, and a sister, Christine who was just seventeen. You were our little surprise. Your father and I cherished you.” She paused seeing that Tommy didn’t want any platitudes about the parental love he had lost.

She continued, “They were both young and idealistic. At that time, the Frontier systems were hitting a stride with mining and resources. Some of them, though, were struggling. The government, to reach out to these systems, recruited large groups of young people. The appeal was to be of service to the galaxy before embarking on a career. So, they left for their great adventure.”

Annie paused a moment to collect her thoughts. She smiled as she continued. “They were very happy in their correspondence. Christy was a preschool teacher. The families she served worked on a plantation. Very labor intensive and physical. David was assigned to water purification. They shared this adventure and seemed happy.”

“Then their mail just stopped.” Her voice caught briefly. After she collected herself she went on. “There had been a raid by a competing plantation. Most of the colony was lost. They never found the bodies, your brother’s and sister’s that is. It was almost a year before we got word through one of your father’s contacts that David had been spotted alive, out here in the Fringe.” Annie’s image showed her emotional struggle as she relived it.

“Your father and I knew that one of us had to go and search. This was too far out for any government agency to do much. Your father was tied to his work, so I came. At first, I was part of the same relief effort David and Christy had joined. I provided medical care for those devastated by natural disasters or where there was no medical care. Much like what the MOM provides now, only on a smaller scale.” Annie took a breath here.

“I was out here for almost three years before I picked up another clue. I had to follow it alone. Another of the Wars had begun, and it wasn’t safe.” Now Annie looked right through him. “Tommy, I found her. I found my daughter, your sister. I’m still not sure what kind of a nightmare she had lived, but I would do anything to get her out of there.”

Annie pleaded, “Oh Tommy, please understand. You were safe with your father. You were growing up with at least one parent. But Christy was just beginning her life. She’d been lost, and I found her.” Annie’s image was reaching across the low table to touch Tommy.

Tommy realized that his mother’s image was not alone in its desperation. He turned to his mother’s body suspended in the casket behind the image. There, her older, sicker visage, also reached out to him, touching the side of her clear casket wall. Her eyes wide open, and although cloudier than her hologram, they were his mother’s eyes. Her real eyes, asked Tommy for forgiveness. Tommy was drawn to her casket by that stare. As he crossed to her through the gloom of her cabin, he saw the fear melt out of her pale face. He reached out and touched the side of the casket where his mother’s hand touched from the other side.

That’s when he saw the scythe tattoo. Part of it was just visible around her shoulder. He dropped his hand and moved to that side of the casket for a better view. It was the same scythe blade design with the medical staff, snake and wings crossed over it. That was all. There were no images of a reaper. There was no death. But the tattoo still branded her. She had something to do with these pirates.

He turned to her face, his only inches from the side of the casket. Staring into those eyes, they again begged his understanding and forgiveness. Not talkative most of the time, Tommy’s mouth moved, but no voice came out. His lips formed only two words, “How” and “Why.”

Agnes lay in her med unit bed sleeping. She was past the danger point but still weak, and she had bad congestion in her chest and sinuses. The perma-glass partition was firmly in place. It separated her from the observation room of her quarantine cabin, but it opened at one end for easy access by the staff. Annie’s avatar still stood silent vigil in the corner by her bed. In the quiet, broken only by monitor equipment humming in the background, Agnes would mummer or cough, waking herself up. She had just gotten comfortable after a coughing fit when the hatch to her cabin opened and a single light came on in the observation room.

She faced away from the light source. It would only blind her if she turned over to see who had entered. It was probably one of the nurses checking on her again. Couldn’t they just let her sleep, she wondered? Then she opened her eyes and saw the shadow on the wall.

It puzzled her at first. The shape of a man bent over a gurney. But on the gurney was something she did not understand. The shadow looked like the disembodied head and arm of a person sitting on top of one of Alfred’s spider avatars. She was about to turn over when she heard the head talking to the man.

“We’ll have access to the Alpha patient soon. The MOMA cabin has finally been breached,” came a woman’s whispered voice. “Make no mistakes. End the extra one here. Make it look natural. G will be here soon to take care of the rest.” Agnes froze.

“The poor thing won’t even know. She’ll have a tragic accident with air in her IV. Under the heavy sedation it will be hard to trace.” The male voice sounded familiar, but his tone was so sinister that Agnes couldn’t be sure she had recognized it from her earlier delirium.

The shadow of the strange spider head then jumped off the gurney and scrambled, crablike to a vent panel. It cut its way into the panel and disappeared down its whole. Agnes heard the man prepare a new IV bag. With her back to him, she moved as slowly as she thought safe and pulled the IV out of her arm. It hurt, but the pain woke her up even more and, helped by the fear, sent a jolt of adrenalin through her system. That gland worked really well at least, she thought.

Larry now came into her part of the cabin with a new sedative laden IV. After he replaced the empty bag, he pulled a syringe out of his jumper pocket. It was empty, but that was the beauty of this murder, he thought. He slipped off the cap of the needle and pulling the plunger out, he injected the whole column of air into the IV tube. As the air bubble traveled down the tube and was close to entering her body, he rolled Agnes over on her back. His attention was on the air bubble. He wanted to make sure that the air bubble entered her blood stream.

That was when Agnes struck. She must have known some basic anatomy because she grabbed Larry by the back of the head. Pulling him toward her own face and rammed the IV needle into his carotid artery. Instead of the air bubble and sedative entering her body, it entered Larry’s and went right to his brain. He collapsed onto her as his body reacted to the bubble. In the lower gravity of her unit in the cabin, she easily pushed him off her body.

“Doctor?” Agnes called to the avatar. No answer. Something was wrong if Agnes could not get a response from her doctor. She must be cut off from her avatar systems and on a MOM that was trouble. Agnes leapt out of her bed, still in a patient gown. “Lights,” she ordered. Relieved to see that some of the basic functions of her room still worked she looked around. Agnes tried to think fast. She needed resources, maybe a weapon. Then she spied the medical cabinet on the opposite side of her bed.

She broke the emergency seal on it and searched through the drawers. She found the standard small cardiac resuscitation device and paddles. Agnes also found gauze and tape to patch up her hand where she’d pulled out her IV. Then her eyes fell on the MOMA avatar’s interchangeable hands. They were humanoid hands for patient interaction, but they could be replaced with a fully equipped surgical appendage. Grabbing this from the storage pocket in the avatar, she set to work. It wouldn’t shoot far or be accurate, but at least she would be able to defend herself a little. Agnes attached the leads from the capacitor on the cardiac device to a lazar scalpel and modified the beam it emitted. She could shoot an effective particle beam at least twenty feet and knock down an assailant.

Agnes didn’t take the time to wonder how she knew how to do this. She made the connections and the adjustments and charged the device. She was moving to the hatch of the observation room when it opened in front of her. Agnes pressed herself against the wall to one side as a pirate she recognized entered the room.

The Gorilla stopped when he saw Larry sprawled over the bed where he lay dying. He scanned the room and sized up Agnes. “I’m ready for round two, are you little girl?” he mocked while he cracked his knuckles.

Agnes didn’t hesitate. She fired. If she hadn’t already had her back to the wall she would have been knocked over. However, the full force of her jerry-rigged weapon blew the pirate into the perma-glass participation. Had it been a full perma-glass wall, he might have been crushed against it. Instead, as a partition, it only shattered and absorbed most of the energy. Gorilla lay unconscious with several broken ribs.

The noise through the open hatch alerted the nurses on duty in the ward. They ran into the ruined room to find Agnes, their patient who had been on death’s door and the broken bodies of two grown men.

Agnes made short work of explanations as the staff ministered to both the pirate and Larry. She wasn’t sure the nurses believed her about what Larry was doing, except all the medical evidence was there. The video monitor in the room had been shut down, so there was no record of the attack.

“Agnes, are you alright?” Alfred’s voice came from one of his smaller spider avatars. “I lost the monitor signal and came as soon as I could with my closest avatar.”

“I’mb, fime,” she mumbled through her congestion. “Where’s Tommy?”

“Speaking with his mother in the MOMA’s cabin.”

“We’b hab’ to get there fast,” she said as she checked the charge on her cardiac weapon and started through the hatch.

“I’ll never keep up with this spider. It is the closest avatar I’ve got.” Alfred scanned the room, “Can you help me with this humanoid avatar?” he inquired.

“That,” she said, “will be easy.” Agnes made three simple connections, and Alfred had a full humanoid avatar at his disposal.

“The internal communication system is down again. Several nodes along the access tube to the MOMA’s cabin have been shut down or destroyed. I am bringing other avatars into the MOM to effect repairs. We have to hurry, the pirates ships are due to return within the next two hours,” Alfred confirmed to Agnes as they raced down the corridor.

“Whab was the deal wibth the medic? Aren’t they on our side?” Agnes asked.

“I do not know,” Alfred responded through the interface of the humanoid avatar. They raced on. Agnes had to stop once to cough and break up the congestion in her lungs. All of this sudden activity was not good for her, Alfred feared. They ran on.

Tommy stepped back from his mother’s casket. The nutrient bath swirled around her suspended body, a mythical veil, cloaking her from the harsh reality of her son’s disdain. As he stared at her in disbelief, her holo-image passed through her body to claim his attention. It stood between Tommy and the pale body of his mother as a protector. For a moment, Tommy saw two different beings. His mother floated behind her younger image, still frightened and vulnerable to Tommy’s judgment of her. The hologram glowered at him as if to scare him off and protect the vulnerable Annie.

Then her image softened and reflected the attitude of his mother’s face behind it. “The tattoo is part of the story and the danger. Pay attention, Tommy. This is important.” Her image walked back to the sofas, but Tommy remained fixed on his mother’s true face as she spoke through her hologram. Her mouth never moved, but her head nodded and her posture changed to illustrate she was indeed the speaker. And her eyes reflected the emotions that her voice expressed.

“I found Christy among an extremist group. I had been treating families in a small village on a plantation planet. They came out of the hills to the clinic we’d set up and asked for a doctor. One of their party had been injured. I went. There was no injury. They knew exactly who I was and my background. They had Christy, and the only way I could see her was to develop a contagion for them. They had a hack that had tried one on several victims. Christy had been his latest test subject. She was dying slowly.”

Annie’s tears blended with the nutrient bath. She continued her story, “Their hack had a strain of virulent flu that killed if you were infected directly, but it was not contagious. And our current regimen of vaccinations made us resilient to infection. I changed that. I created a strain that did exactly what they wanted. I was forced to prove this on a couple from the village they had captured. It was a horror. I could do nothing. The poor woman died and had passed it on to her husband. I had also developed a treatment and vaccine for the virus. I saved the husband.” The memory of saving that man relieved some of her pain. “They gave me this tattoo to brand me as one of them.”

Annie pushed on desperate to tell her story. “Christy was still patient zed. She was still suffering from the original contagion. I infected myself and became a carrier. My strain moved much faster through a population. The husband and I spread the contagion though all the pirates in the camp. We, we…” she paused, “we killed them all.” Cocooned in her casket, Annie wrapped her own arms around herself for comfort.

“I made it to safety after we burned the bodies in the camp. The man- I never knew his name- stayed and walked off into the wilds. Our virus was for humanity. It couldn’t hurt the native life forms. But I was contagious. I made it to this med unit, sealed myself in the nutrient bath and contacted your father. He provided resources to create this first MOM, and I was installed before any staff. They never knew my true condition. No one could enter my cabin. Here, I’ve worked to reverse what I’ve done. If there were ever a breach in this casket, I believe the virus would spread and start killing in mere hours.”

She opened her arms now to Tommy and pressed against the casket wall, the closest touch she could have with her son. “Tommy, you’ve got to know…”

The power in Annie’s cabin shut down. It was cut off to the entire OR complex. With the power dead, the hatch to the cabin opened just a crack and emergency light from the corridor shown in. Backup batteries kicked on in the equipment around Annie’s cabin, including her med unit. A soft glow emanated from her nutrient bath now. With power restored, the cabin hatch locked shut once again. By then, she had gotten in.

“Hey, pretty boy. Fancy meeting you again.” The menacing voice of the Angel Reaper came from the darkness in a corner above the hatch. Tommy strained to find her in the darkness. He heard scraping of metal on metal. Tommy tried to follow it, instinctually placing himself between his mother and the threat. For just a moment, light from a medical display illuminated the pirate’s face and her grotesque spider body. Tommy lunged, but she jumped away out of the light. He tried to follow the sounds of her legs on the walls and ceiling.

Tommy crossed to the sofas again. “Boo!” She jumped out, flaying her legs at Tommy’s face. He ducked. She got a piece of his shoulder and sliced through his jumpsuit into his flesh. It bled. Tommy was sure that if she had wanted to, she could have killed him. Her attack on him was to distract him as she went for her real objective.

The Angel Reaper attached herself to a monitor panel in the floor next to Annie’s casket. She entered some control codes and attaching several of her fiber optic computer cables to parts of the panel that her knife sharp legs pried open. While she used her fake eye to monitor the panel, her real eye kept watch on Tommy. “No heroic moves, pretty boy, or I short out the dear Doctor’s life. It won’t take much.”

“Is that so. Alfred, are you there?” Tommy attempted to contact his partner.

“It’s no good. Dr. Doolittle has done a very fine job making sure no one can get in here, and nothing gets out unless she lets it,” the pirate sneered at him.

Tommy searched the cabin, desperate for a weapon when Annie’s avatar ran at the pirate with her surgical hand spinning wildly, scalpels extended. The Reaper used her own sharp legs to counter the blows that Annie tried to rain down on her. Although well intentioned, Annie was no match for the battle-hardened pirate. The Reaper hacked away gleefully at the avatar, cutting chunks of padding and circuits out of it. Annie tried to get at the fleshy parts of the pirate, but failed.

The distraction gave Tommy time to search the cabin more thoroughly. He found a cabinet opening for him and lights flashing to get his attention. A touch pad near the chemicals flashed the text, “Acid.” His mother could be very resourceful. He grabbed the flask labeled Sulfurous Acid - H2SO3 and waited for his chance to use it.

Angel Reaper had been toying with Annie’s avatar and with a flourish, shoved it away saying, “Well it’s been fun, but it only takes one cut.” With that the pirate turned to the panel where her real arm held up a cable. This she neatly snipped with two of her legs as Annie’s avatar took one last run at the pirate. It collapsed to the ground in a slow fall at Annie’s real feet in the nutrient bath.

It didn’t look like Tommy could get close enough with the flask of acid to hit the pirate on what was left of her human body where it would do the most good. Still, Tommy jumped, ducked and rolled to get closer to his mother’s casket and the pirate. “Shall we dance?” sang out the pirate abomination as she moved to block Tommy’s advance. She’s playing with me, thought Tommy as he feinted and pounced. If those nippers on her spider legs get ahold of me again I’m gone. He tucked and summersaulted behind a scanner table.

She jumped on the table as Tommy rolled under it. Coming up behind the table, he had his chance. Tommy smashed the flask against the right side of her skull. She screamed in fury and writhed on the tabletop, dripping blood, flesh and acid on the counter. Tommy backed away toward his mother when the pirate started laughing.

“Thanks for the bath pretty boy. I should have showered for our date.” Now the pirate hopped off the counter and advanced toward Tommy on its spider legs. “Don’t think I don’t appreciate the thought.” She backed Tommy toward his mother’s casket. He tripped on the monitor panel she had attached moments before. Tommy fell against the casket. She climbed up the casket, pinning Tommy’s arms and leering into his face.

This close to her, Tommy had no trouble seeing where the flask smashed and her flesh had burned away. On this side of her face, her skull and parts of her jaw had been replaced with metal and circuits. There was a ragged edge that cut diagonally across her face, not quite to her nose. Some human bone was exposed, but Tommy saw nanites cleaning and repairing both damaged circuits and human flesh as he watched.

She had one sharp pincher inches from his eyes. That’s when the entry panel next to the cabin hatch exploded, and the hatch rolled open. In charged Agnes and a humanoid avatar. Annie couldn’t have been in control of it, so Tommy knew it was Alfred. Agnes raised some strange cobbled together gadget and a burst of heat sliced past Tommy’s cheek. It also sliced off the pincher that was about to gouge out Tommy’s eyes.

The pirate let go of Tommy, and he fell to the floor under the low gravity setting of the OR. A welt rose on Tommy’s cheek where the blast had burned him, and his arms were cut up, but he could still fight. Alfred’s avatar rushed forward to check Tommy for any other injuries. Agnes kept her scalpel raised at the pirate while the whine of its capacitor charging climbed higher. The pirate glared out the door as if expecting more.

“There’s no one’b coming. Your otb’her two’b esca’bees are down’b and maybe deab,” Agnes said with menace through her congestion. And she fired another blast from her scalpel taking off a piece of the pirate’s good arm. Now the pirate glared hatred at Agnes and made to attack. But as the scalpel recharged, Agnes raised it with deadly accuracy at the pirate’s head. Agnes stood firm between the pirate and Tommy lying on the ground with Alfred ready to back her up.

The pirate now smiled, realizing she had the advantage, but something in her face had changed. She glanced at the monitor panel again. Tommy took the moment to glance at his mother. She was trying to communicate something to him. Mouthing as she gestured to him.

“Well, times a wastin’. Wish I could stay and play some more pretty boy, but doc and me, we’ve got an appointment to keep, and the company at this party just went south.”

She punched one last sequence into the panel on Annie’s casket. With that, Annie’s casket folded into a slot in the ceiling where her cabin connected to the rest of the MOM. Half a metal cylinder slid down over the back of her casket and covering the cyber core equipment that kept her alive. Vapors floated down from this capsule. This was an ejection pod to save the MOMA in case of ship wide disaster. A ship could be replaced, but the surgeon was a scarce commodity on the Fringe.

As the cylinder folded over Annie’s whole cyber core, two things happened. The pirate skittered into a space at the base of the core. She was going along for the ride. The other was Annie. Although she couldn’t speak to Tommy, she signaled to him. Pointing to the sabotaged panel at Tommy’s feet she then mimicked cradling an imaginary baby in her arms. The last sight Tommy had of his mother she held up three fingers.

The cylinder sealed shut, and the entire capsule rose into the ceiling. In seconds, Tommy felt the vibration through the floor of a launch. The pirate had gotten what she came for. Tommy’s mother, Annie and the deadly contagion were now in terrorist hands. A new Fringe War may have just begun.